Visitor arrivals up 52.9 per cent

Visitor arrivals reached 454,657 in July compared with 297,308 in July 2021, an increase of 52.9 per cent, the statistical service said on Wednesday.

For the period of January to July 2022, arrivals totalled 1.68 million compared with 638,292 in the corresponding period of 2021.

Between January and July 2020, the ‘pandemic summer’ only 320,589 tourism arrivals were recorded.

In 2019, a record year, between January and July, there were 2.18 million tourist arrivals.

Arrivals from the United Kingdom were the main source of tourism last month with a share of 38.2 per cent (173,874) of visitor arrivals, followed by Israel with 8.4 per cent (38,269 arrivals), Poland with 4.7 per cent (21,285), Germany with 4.7 per cent (21,280), Sweden with 4.3 per cent (19,732) and Greece with 3.4 per cent (15,450).

From the visitor arrivals, 84.9 per cent were here on holiday, while 12.2 per cent came to visit friends and relatives, and 2.8 visited on business.

In July 2021, just over 85 of visitors came for holidays, 11,3 per cent visited friends or relatives and 3.7 per cent visited for business reasons.