Tourism minister says island aiming for two million visitors this year

The goal for Cyprus is to see over two million foreign visitors until the end of the year, Deputy Minister of Tourism Savvas Perdios said on Tuesday.

Speaking after the House commerce committee, Perdios admitted the loss of around 800,000 potential visitors from the Russian and the Ukrainian markets represents a significant blow for the island.

“Unfortunately, we will not reach pre-pandemic levels, when we welcomed around four million people in Cyprus,” he said.

“However, we expect to surpass the two-million mark and certainly do better than last year.”

Perdios added that the interest from abroad in coming to Cyprus remains high and that the first three months of the year had already seen arrivals equivalent to 75 per cent of the total bookings for 2021.

“However, we will not make up for the losses of the Russian and Ukrainian markets, so we cannot envision approaching the number of visitors we had in 2019,” Perdios said.

“Nevertheless, there is increased interest from untraditional markets, such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries. This is positive news for Cyprus, as we always wanted to strengthen those markets.”

Finally, Perdios assured that Cyprus will not change its stance on Russia just to see the numbers of tourists rise over the summer months.