Cyprus eyes more tourists from Sweden, Finland

Tourism Minister Costas Koumis held contacts in Stockholm and Helsinki to increase flight capacity to Cyprus over the next year.

Koumis met leading executives of travel firms and airlines that operate routes from the Nordic countries to Cyprus and exchanged views.

Developments in four Nordic countries with tourist links to Cyprus, namely Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, were discussed, as well as other issues that would make tourism more competitive.

The objective was to increase the number of airline seats offered to Cyprus next year.

“I would say that we are very satisfied with the results of our contacts, and we are very optimistic that our goal will be achieved.

“After all, it has been known for a few days that Finnair airline is planning to increase the number of seats offered to our country for next year, while we expect a reasonable increase to be achieved by other partners, perhaps even from new cities, which we also consider important,” Koumis said.

He said these four markets have been linked to the country’s tourism for many years, recording significant numbers of visitors since the 1980s.

“Cyprus is certainly interested in extending the tourist season and strengthening the winter season.”

Koumis said that the fact that Finnair decided to maintain the Helsinki – Larnaca flight during the winter is a great success and a challenge.

He considers “extremely important the degree of satisfaction of our partners and the thousands of tourists who visited our country”.

“What remains now is the finalisation of our partners’ programme and certainly the planning of promotional activities.

“We should all work collectively and purposefully to bring even better days for our country’s tourism.”