Ryanair to bring 30,000 tourists from Belgium to Cyprus

 — Offers 500,000 tickets at €5 in September —

Low cost operator Ryanair will launch its Cyprus schedule in November with twice-weekly flights from Belgium’s Charleroi airport, boosting the island’s tourism industry with a potential 30,000 new passengers, primarily young holidaymakers.
A senior airline official said Wednesday that the flights would be operated every Wednesday and Saturday and the cost of a basic one-way ticket would be about 35 euros, including all airport charges.
Laura McCormick, Ryanair’s sales and marketing executive for the UK and Ireland, told a press launch in Nicosia that the company also plans to offer 500,000 tickets at just 5 euros for travel to a number of destinations throughout September.
The tickets can only be booked up to Monday night (August 23) and are valid for travel to Ryanair destinations operated on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday.
McCormick said that a second route connecting Cyprus to a western European airport, also scheduled to start in November, will be announced soon. This will bring Ryanair’s contribution to the island’s struggling tourism industry to about 60,000 passengers a year.
Adriaan van der Meer, CEO of the Cyprus airports operator Hermes, said that based on an expected traffic of 500,000 passengers over five years and an average 700 euros spent by each tourist in Cyprus, Ryanair’s contribution to the Cyprus economy could be in the region of 350 mln euros.
However, the chairman of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation, Aleccos Orountiotis, said that no incentives had been given to Ryanair in order to bring its business to Cyprus.
“The airline had been planning to start a Cyprus schedule for some time, we just had to negotiate some terms… such as not to operate on any of our existing high-traffic routes, such as London and Athens,” he said.
McCormick explained that Ryanair operates on a low-cost fare basis throughout its network and expects revenues to come from on-board products and services.