Tourist arrivals to the island in January fell 3.3% compounded by a plunge in British visitors, official figures showed.
In January 44.442 tourists arrived compared to 45.952 during the same month last year. It was the lowest level of arrivals in January for 20 years. This drop follows a bigger 7.6% decline in arrivals in December.
There was a 14% decrease is holidaymakers for Britain (15.292)-the island’s largest tourist market-and 2.5% fall from recession-hit Greece(7.286).
However, there was a 29.9% surge in tourists from Russia (3.873) and 1.1% increase from Germany (4.128) to help soften the below.
Overall holiday arrivals recovered slightly in 2010 reaching 2.17 million, the lowest level since 1997.
Furthermore, over the last three years tourism arrivals are still down by more than 12% income from tourism accounts for 12% of Cyprus’s gross domestic product.
Holidaymakers to Cyprus hit a peak of 2.69 million in 2001 spending a record euro 2.17 b.
Tourism Revenue for 2010 reached euro 1.54b compared with euro1.49b for 2009 from euro1.79b in 2008 and euro1.85b in 2007. Banking on improved tourism income, the government hopes the economy will grow by at least 1.5% this year after kicking off an unprecedented year-long recession.
Cyprus is trying to reduce a fiscal deficit that was around double the EU’s permitted ceiling of 3%.
The government has raised taxes and cut spending in efforts to bring the deficit below 4% in 2011 as required by Brussels.
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