Tourism arrivals in 2021 hovered just below the 2 million mark – some three times more than the previous year but only half the record-breaking pre-pandemic year of 2019, according to figures published by the Cyprus statistical service (Cystat) on Thursday.
In December 2021, Cyprus welcomed 96,928 tourists compared to a meagre 9,682 in December 2020 and not far below the 110,330 tourist arrivals in December 2019.
For the 12 months of 2021, arrivals of tourists totaled 1,936,931 compared to 631,609 in the corresponding period of 2020, recording an increase of 206.7 per cent and a decrease of 51.3 per cent compared to 2019 when Cyprus saw a record of 3,976,777 arrivals.
Arrivals from the United Kingdom were the main source of tourism for December 2021, with a share of 19.8 per cent (19,199) of total arrivals, followed by Greece with 12.8 per cent (12,420), Russia with 9.5 per cent (9,234), Poland with 7.2 per cent (6,989), Germany with 6.8 per cent (6,618) and Ukraine with 6.4 per cent (6,169).
For 61.5 per cent of tourists, the purpose of their trip in December 2021 was holidays, for 29.0 per cent visit to friends and relatives and for 9.5 per cent business. For December 2020, the corresponding shares were 25.6 per cent of tourists visited Cyprus for holidays, 51.8 per cent visited friends or relatives and 22.6 per cent visited Cyprus for business reasons.
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