CYPRUS: Tourism up 12% in February, mainly UK and Greece

The total number of arrivals for the month reached 50,709, from 45,227 in February 2014, in tandem with a 3.8% rise for the whole winter period reported a day earlier by the Cyprus Tourism Organisation.
February saw an increase of 7.2% in tourist arrivals from the United Kingdom, rising from 16,172 in February 2014 to 17,329 in February 2015, suggesting that holidaymakers from the biggest market to Cyprus picked up in the last month. For the whole winter period, the CTO had recorded a marginal drop of 0.3% from November to February, from 76,763 last year to 76,517 this winter.
Despite the economic woes, tourist arrivals from Greece were up 20.1% in February, rising from 6,254 to 7,510 year on year, while for the whole winter period CTO recorded a 2.4% rise to 29,364 from 28,663 last winter.
The crisis in Ukraine and the troubled rouble seemed to have impacted tourist arrivals from Russia earlier in the season with the February decline seen at 10.4% dropping to 3,659 in February from 4,084 in February 2014. This is a relatively better number for Cyprus’ second biggest market as the CTO data showed that all-winter arrivals from Russia had declined by 15.7% for the whole period from 26,251 to 22,142, as major travel agents also had to deal with closures.
For the January-February period, Cystat said tourist arrivals rose by 7.7% to 92,508, from 85,903 a year earlier.
The CTO data for the whole winter period showed arrivals from November to February saw a 3.8% increase year-on-year to 230,808 from 222,257 in the year-earlier period, with the biggest increase in holidaymakers from Germany and Israel.