Cyprus tourism disappoints in July

After a brief ray of light in June, when arrivals rose by 5.5%, the number of tourism arrivals was disappointment in July, inching up by only 0.7% over the same period of the previous year to 306,106 in July 2010.
The main reason was a drop of 8.8% in the number of arrivals from the United Kingdom, which still accounts for half of all tourists.
Arrivals from the UK fell to 142,113 in July 2010 compared with 155,901 in July 2009.
However, one bright spot was a strong increase of 47.2% in tourist arrivals from Russia, which rose from 23,653 in July 2009 to 34,814 in July 2010.
There was also an 8.4% increase from Sweden from 15,438 to 16,731 and a 7.0% increase from Norway (from 11,812 to 12,644 this year).
Arrivals from Greece, which had held up earlier in the year, were down 4.9% decrease to 14,209 compared with 14,940 in 2009.
For the period January – July 2010 arrivals of tourists rose by 0.3% to 1,184,065 compared with 1,187,128 in the corresponding period of 2009.