Google searches for Cyprus reached 1.5 million a week in April

Google results for Cyprus in the past few months topped the number of searches for the island in 2019, a record year for Cypriot visitors, deputy minister for tourism Savvas Perdios said on Friday.

Addressing the exhibition ‘Taxidi 2022’, which opened its gates after two years due to the pandemic, Perdios said that despite the difficulties everyone should “feel encouraged” because even though it would be a difficult year “it is not going to be a disaster”.

Due to the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia, Cyprus’ second largest tourist market, the Cypriot tourist authorities have said that an estimated 800,000 arrivals from these two markets should be considered as lost.

However, Perdios referred to the data for Google searches for Cyprus, noting that “from January to the end of April we are plus 10 per cent compared to the same time of 2019” following the loss from Russia and Ukraine.

“Every week in April we had 1.5 million Google searches for Cyprus,” he added.

“This is bigger than the Google searches per week we saw in 2019 in the month of August,” he added.

Noting that these were very important statistics, Perdios said however that “this does not mean we will have a better season than 2019, no this is not what I said, what I said is there is a lot of pent-up demand and a lot of interest for Cyprus.”

“So, it is up to all of us to make sure that we work together and deliver a better season than many people expected,” he noted. “I am very happy to say that we are improving what Cyprus is who we are and our product and based on this this is why we see more demand for Cyprus, ”he said.