Travel Statistics for an unchanged face of Tourists to Cyprus
Positive points for Cyprus Tourism as Arrivals surpass the 2 million visitor mark in October
Good news as Cyprus Tourism breaks with the psychological barrier of two million visitors, 1 month ahead of schedule compared to 2009.
These positive figures are a good indication that traditional markets are recovering, and this is of real importance, as Cyprus retains a 93% tourism dependency on arrivals from European markets.
The good side to this dependency, is that, it is reliant on markets for which Cyprus is already known, which in times of crisis and uncertainty, can be seen as an advantage and perhaps a good vantage point for Tourism Promotion to be exploiting commercially.
As one can observe from the comparative Top 10 countries ranking over the last 3 years, 83% of total arrivals (Jan-October) seem to comfortably place the UK, Russia, Germany, Greece and Scandinavia ahead in the rankings as the most relevant countries principal visitors to Cyprus. The most significant change perhaps, is the return to consolidation of countries such as Germany and Scandinavia which experienced over very strong recovery growth from 2009. The percentage increase from 2009 also proved significant for countries in the Baltic, Serbia, Slovakia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Spain all of which have demonstrated strong interest in Cyprus and we thank them for that.
As far as Tourism of proximity remains the key for Cyprus, long distance destinations such as the USA, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and even Russia have yet to recuperate and maintain their lagging spots from the cumulative data of 2010 (Jan-Oct) compared to 2009. So for these countries, if 2009 was a bad year, 2010 is definitely worse. To which we may add and highlight that Israel, Lebanon and Russia also join the group of countries for which outbound tourism to Cyprus in 2010 have seen maintained themselves in negative growth, although it may be too early to judge how and what role have diplomacy played in the influence on Travel statistics.
As much as we would like to believe that we have left the recession behind in Europe, let's hope that the emerging crisis of the Cyprus Airlines does not tarnish the positive evolution and won't add further uncertainty and risk to Customer service.
Data Source: Courtesy of the Statistical Service and Cyprus Tourism Organization, October 2010