Cyprus tourism officials hope arrivals will not fall in 2012

The negative climate prevailing in the tourist industry has been reversed during the last three months, Cyprus Tourism Organisation chairman Alekos Orountiotis has said, estimating that tourist arrivals in 2012 will be maintained at the same level of 2011.
He said that the negative projections for 2012 were confirmed during the first months of the year. “We indeed had some losses in tourist arrivals and in the income from tourism”, he said, noting however, that things changed and the negative climate has been reversed.
Orountiotis said that it is possible, at the end of the year, tourist arrivals to record an increase compared with 2011.
CTO Chairman stressed that 2012 has been a very difficult year due to the major problems that Cyprus’ main tourist markets, such as England and Germany, are facing.
He said that from January to May 2012, a total of 573,459 tourists visited Cyprus, compared to 573,985 in the same period of 2011, slightly decreased by 0.8%. He also said that next week, CTO will release the statistics for June.
Despite the decrease in the number of arrivals from Britain compared with 2011, there was a satisfactory number of reservations in June 2012.
As regards Germany, he said that there is a decrease, which could be attributed to the fact that tour operators in the German market include Cyprus in the packages of Greece. He estimates that tourist arrivals from Germany will record a small decrease by the end of the year, compared with 2011. “However, this is an achievement, because in the first months of the year there was a significant decrease from that market”, he added.
The fact that those two markets are beginning to recover and with the contribution from the Russian market, from which increased arrivals are expected, make us feel confident that we will manage to conclude the year with a positive outcome, the CTO chairman added.
Orountiotis said that the CTO identified a number of cases of overpriced tourist products, noting however that less cases were reported from 2011.