Small drop in 2008 tourists but major markets down

TOTAL tourist arrivals in 2008 decreased at 0.5 per cent and 2009 is expected to be another difficult year, the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) said yesterday.

In its statement yesterday, the CTO said that according to official figures from the Statistical Office, the total arrivals of travellers in 2008 amounted to 2,403,750 compared with 2,416,081 in 2007, a marginal decrease of 0.5 per cent.

“The reduction was confined at 0.5 per cent, due to significant increases in tourists from Russia at 24 per cent, and Nordic countries with an average increase of 12.3 per cent, despite the fall seen in the number of travellers from major markets like the United Kingdom, which was down 3.1 per cent. Germany fell 4.6 per cent and Greece 4.9 per cent.

CTO said 2008 was “without doubt” a very difficult year for the tourism sector, because of the continuous rise in fuel prices in the beginning of the year which especially affected Cyprus because of the island’s distance from tourist source countries.

Additionally, the CTO said the fall of sterling against the euro badly affected tourism coming from the UK, while the global financial crisis also played a negative role.

Regarding winter tourism, the CTO said the special emphasis given to countries such as Russia and Germany resulted in a significant increase in available seats and first results were very encouraging, it said.

It also said that maintaining airline seats and packages from the UK during the winter period was also very important because British travel agents reduced package holidays to traditional destinations such as Mallorca and Ibiza.

Regarding 2009, the CTO expects it to be another very difficult year for tourism “the CTO is in close cooperation with all the stakeholders and makes every effort and will do everything possible to achieve the best results”.

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