Tourist arrivals saw an annual increase of 12% in April, the Statistical Service reported, with the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) adding that the results of the May 2015-April 2016 period, with 2.75 mln arrivals constitute an all-time record.
On the basis of the results of the Passengers Survey, tourist arrivals reached 225,575 in April compared to 201,495 in April 2015, an increase of 12%.
An increase of 9.6% was recorded in arrivals from the U.K. (from 83,361 in April 2015 to 91,391 in April 2016), 53.4% from Russia (from 25,149 to 38,591) and 46.6% from Israel (from 8,312 to 12,185 this year).
On the other hand a drop of 6.4% was recorded in tourist arrivals from Greece (16,685 in April 2016 compared to 17,825 in April 2015).
For the January – April period, arrivals totalled 477,183 compared to 391,483 in the same period of 2015, an increase of 21.9%. Referring to this result, CTO said that an increase of arrivals was recorded from nearly all the main tourist markets.
The CTO referred to an increase of arrivals from the UK (up by 21.6%), Russia (up by 54.6%), Germany (up by 19.2%), Israel (up by 36.6%) and Poland (up by 62.3%).
On the other hand, the number of Cypriot residents travelling abroad fell in April for the first time this year on a 12-monthly basis, according to Cystat data.
On the basis of the results of the Passenger Survey, 87,255 residents of Cyprus returned from a trip abroad in April, compared to 92,387 in the same month last year, recording a drop of 5.6%.
In April, trips of residents to Greece fell by 2.6% (34,217 compared to 35,128 in April 2015). At the same time there was a 24.8% drop of residents returning from the U.K. (13,777 compared to 18,327 last year).
Meanwhile, Eurostat data shows that 67.1% of air tickets sold in Cyprus in 2014, were issued through the internet.
Similarly, 43.9% of all hotel reservations in Cyprus and other accommodation were made online. Both rates are close to the EU average of 67.4% and 54.8%, respectively.
The European Commission said that the uptake of new information and communication technologies (ICT) has been a significant driver of changes to both the way we book our travel and the workflow of enterprises in the tourism sector. On the one hand, tourists from the EU make large use of the internet for their trips.
In 2014, more than two thirds of air trips and more than half of train trips were booked online. Accommodation was also booked online for more than half of the trips. On the other hand, enterprises working in the accommodation sector seem to be more advanced in using ICT than many other sectors. While online ordering is offered by 17% of all enterprises in 2014, this share reached 74% for the accommodation sector.
