Britons still like Cyprus but September arrivals down

By Jean Christou

CYPRUS is still one of the top holiday destinations from Britons, according to a survey in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

The paper said it had sent out 25,000 holiday questionnaires to discover what British holidaymakers thought of the travel industry. Categories included the best and worst holiday destinations, tour operators, cities, hotels, airports, chartered airlines and car-hire.

Topping the destination list was Italy, followed by the Greek islands and then Cyprus. Portugal and Iceland came in fourth and fifth. Turkey found itself in fifth place on the list of ‘least favourite’ destinations, which was headed by Bulgaria, Russia, Spain and Poland.

But there was bad news for Cypriot tycoon Stelios Haji-Ioannou, whose low- cost airline easyJet was ousted from the number one spot as ‘Best Low-Cost airline’ by its British Airways no-frills rival Go. However, his easyRentacar clinched the car-hire top spot for the first time.

The survey was carried out before the September 11 terrorist attack in the US, which has devastated the global travel industry and affected tourist arrivals to Cyprus for the third quarter of the year.

Statistics released yesterday by the Commerce, Industry and Tourism Ministry showed that arrivals for September were down 0.2 per cent from the almost 330,000 tourists who came in September last year.

Total arrivals since the beginning of the year have been up four per cent.

Before September 11, Cyprus had been headed for a five per cent plus increase in tourism, which would have given it a record three million visitors. Estimates for 2001 now put the number of tourists at 2.7 million, the same figure as last year, with revenue of £1.2 billion.

Around 50 per cent of the island’s tourists come from Britain, accounting for 1.4 million of total visitors. The UK-market contributes £660 million to the total tourism revenue.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.