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The arrivals of tourists reached 96.928 in December 2021 compared to 9.682 in December 2020 and to 110.330 tourist arrivals in December 2019.

For the period of January – December 2021, arrivals of tourists totaled 1.936.931 compared to 631.609 in the corresponding period of 2020, recording an increase of 206,7%, and a decrease of 51,3% compared to the period of January – December 2019 (3.976.777 arrivals).

Arrivals from the United Kingdom were the main source of tourism for December 2021, with a share of 19,8% (19.199) of total arrivals, followed by Greece with 12,8% (12.420), Russia with 9,5% (9.234), Poland with 7,2% (6.989), Germany with 6,8% (6.618) and Ukraine with 6,4% (6.169).                                                                                           

For a percentage of 61,5% of tourists, the purpose of their trip in December 2021 was holidays, for 29,0% visit to friends and relatives and for 9,5% business. Respectively, in December 2020, 25,6% of tourists visited Cyprus for holidays, 51,8% visited friends or relatives and 22,6% visited Cyprus for business reasons.

Methodological notes

Definitions

Tourists – Visitors who stay for at least one night in Cyprus.

Tourist arrivals – The term refers to the number of trips and not to the number of persons. This differs in the sense that one person can take more than one trips during the reference period.

Source of data and coverage

The statistics for December 2021 were obtained from processing of the data of the electronic platform “Cyprus Flight Pass”. The passengers aiming to travel to Cyprus were required to submit in the abovementioned platform, information in relation to their flight, their country of residence, the purpose of their visit, as well as other demographic characteristics. This information was used by the Statistical Service, in order to estimate the number of tourist arrivals during the reference period. The weighting of data was conducted based on the data sent to the Statistical Service by the Civil Aviation Department and from the ship manifests, as well as data sent by the Analysis and Statistics Office of the Cyprus Police.

Due to issues that arose from the self-declared information provided by the passengers, it was not possible to provide a more extensive analysis by country of usual residence.

For more information visit CYSTAT Portal, subtheme Tourism CYSTAT-DB (Online Database) Predefined Tables (Excel) or contact Ms Lucy Panayidou: tel.:+35722602152, e-mail: lpanagidou@cystat.mof.gov.cy

(EK/IK)