Volcano took its toll on Cyprus’s April tourism

The Cyprus tourist season at Easter was disastrous, according to the latest figures from the Statistical Service, with arrivals dropping by 23% over the year earlier to 139,658 in April 2010 compared with 181,395 in April 2009, after an encouraging rise of 14.8% in March.
No official figures have been released on the number of cancellations as a result of the volcanic ash from Iceland that grounded planes across Europe. Moreover, those in the sector say that it will take time to judge the effect of cancelled as opposed to postponed trips.
However, as of April 21, the president of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO), Alecos Orountiotis, had estimated that the number of trips affected had reached 20,000.
An additional 20,000 tourists would not have led to an increase in arrivals in April, but would have brought the year on year fall down to 12%.
In April a decrease of 25.8% was recorded in tourist arrivals from the United Kingdom (62,742 in April 2010 compared to 84.526 in April 2009) and 13.5% decrease from Germany (13,724 compared to 15,863 last year).
On the other hand an increase of 30.8% was recorded in tourist arrivals from Russia (from 8,341 in April 2009 to 10,910 in April 2010).
For the period January – April 2010 arrivals of tourists rose by 8.2% to reach 344,664 compared with 375,523 in the corresponding period of 2009.

Travel abroad rises in March
Meanwhile, there was an increase in outbound tourism during March.
The Statistical Service reported that 105,805 residents of Cyprus returned from a trip abroad in March 2010 compared with 83,899 in the corresponding month of 2009, thus recording an increase of 26.1%.
There was an increase of 34.8% in the number of trips of residents to Greece (from 28,678 in March 2009 to 38,664 in March 2010) as well as a 54.4% increase from the United Kingdom (from 20,523 to 31,681 this year) .