The coronavirus pandemic has wrecked havoc over the travel industry worldwide, and Cyprus, of course, is no exception to this. The island nation, which had seen a substantial increase in tourist arrivals last January, has in this one seen a dip in numbers like no other.
In January 2021, Cyprus had all of 3,889 tourist arrivals – a far cry from the 85,622 tourist arrivals in the same time last year.
The data, which has been published by the Cyprus statistical service (Cystat) further, showed that the return rate has similarly gone down – from 134,507 in January 2020 to only 13,307 in January 2021. This is only 10% of the total number of returns in 2020.
Most of the arrivals in January 2021 were from neighboring country Greece at a whopping 48.4%, followed by Germany at 8.8%.
As for returnees, most of them came back from Russia, Greece and the United Kingdom.
The information quoted for January 2021 was derived from the processing of the data of the “Cyprus Flight Pass” – an electronic platform where all passengers traveling to and/or from Cyprus must disclose their travel-related data in. Data includes the which all passengers aiming to travel to Cyprus must submit with information in relation to their flight, their country of residence, the purpose of their visit, as well as other demographic characteristics.