Airports register record March travellers

Tourism is on the road to a full recovery in 2023 after Cyprus airports recorded record passenger traffic for March.

According to Cyprus airports operator Hermes Airports, Larnaca and Paphos airports had 5.8% more passengers in March than in the record year of 2019.

As announced, a total of 597,000 passengers went through the airports last month.

The increase in the overall traffic was due to passengers travelling through Paphos airport, as figures increased by 24.2% compared to 2022 and 26.6% compared to 2019.

Some 392,273 passengers travelled through the larger Larnaca airport, marking a 71% increase from 2022 and a 2.6% decrease compared to 2019.

The best-performing March on record follows a record number of passengers recorded in February.

For February, Hermes announced that 454,000 passengers passed through the airports, an increase of 10% compared to the same month in pre-COVID 2019.

Last year ended with 9.2 million passengers passing through Cyprus airports, approximately 82% of passenger traffic in 2019.

In 2019 passenger traffic rose to record levels reaching 11.3 million from 10.9 million in 2018.

In 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic and restrictive measures, passenger traffic fell to 2.3 million, while in 2021, it increased to 5 million due to the gradual lifting of measures.

Cyprus tourism stakeholders, including Hermes Airports, had set the bar for 2023 high, aiming to push arrivals beyond the record-breaking levels of 2019, when Cyprus welcomed 3.97 million tourists.

Authorities have improved Cyprus’ air connectivity, the driving force of the tourism industry.

Compared to February 2019, 11 new destinations were introduced, such as Paris, Prague, Rome, and Marseilles, replacing the loss of the markets of Russia and Ukraine due to the war.