Hermes Airports expects increased air traffic by 3,6% this year. Speaking to "F", Maria Kouroupi, Senior Communications and Marketing Director of Hermes Airports, stressed that based on the flight program announced by the airlines, tourism for 2017 will be maintained at high levels. "Britain and Israel will continue to grow due to new routes and increased availability of seats, while we expect a large increase from Germany."
Initially, Britain for 2016 recorded an increase of 13% due to new itineraries throughout the year. In 2017, as Mrs. Kouroupi noted, a further increase of 8% is expected due to new routes. "There are more airline seats and availability on flights to Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and JET2 enters the game with two routes to Manchester and London," he added.
For 2016, Russia recorded an increase of 47% due to the new airlines and travel agents (Pobeda, Rossiya, Coral, Annex) that choose Cyprus. Ms. Kouroupi noted that for 2017 Russia is expected to move to last year's levels with last year with a slight decline perhaps due to the delay of small travel agents to announce their program.
At the same time, as Ms. Kouroupi stated, passenger traffic from Israel in 2016 increased by 47% due to new flights. In fact, he estimates that there will be a further 18% increase in passenger traffic from Israel due to Ryanair's new route to Tel Aviv daily.
However, the big surprise for 2017 will be Germany. As Ms. Kouroupi pointed out, Germany will have the largest increase for 2017 by 70% as Condor and Small Planet return.
Regarding Greece, Ms. Kouroupi expects a small drop in 2017 due to the departure of the route to Athens from Ryanair and Emirates.
2016 was a great year for tourism and this is evident from the data of Hermes Airports as in 2016 8.97 million passengers were handled. In other words, there was an increase of 18% in passenger traffic compared to 2015, which translates into an additional 1.36 million passengers. More specifically, the increase in traffic in Larnaca amounted to 24,5% and in Paphos to 2,6%.
Source: The Liberal