There are currently around 560 weekly flights arriving from abroad at Larnaca and Paphos airports.
According to Hermes, 220 are from Paphos and the remaining 340 are from Larnaca.
What is important is the big picture regarding the fact that Cyprus is starting to recover again after the shock caused by the pandemic in air transport and tourism. It is also worth noting that this recovery comes at a very difficult time for the aviation and tourism industry due to the war in Ukraine, which especially for Cyprus implies a "loss" of about 25% to 30% of the tourism market of previous years. came from Russia and Ukraine.
These losses, which in real numbers reach about 800.000 tourists, according to Hermes airport Senior Development and Communication Director Maria Kouroupi who spoke on Sigma TV, can not be completely covered. However, a serious effort is being made by all tourism operators in order to reduce the damage and compensate for the loss of Russian and Ukrainian tourists with visitors from other countries. An effort that seems to be bearing fruit.
At the moment there are flights from 38 countries, the routes amount to 140 and the airlines that operate them (to and from Cyprus) are about 40, said Ms. Kouroupi.
These data "show that the year has all the backgrounds to go very well, except for the unexpected. In fact, April went much better than we expected, with occupancy rates close to 80%. We hope that this dynamic will continue in May and will reach its peak during the summer months ".
Challenges after the summer…
Globally, there is an increased demand after the pandemic for travel, especially during the summer months. Also bookings that were paid in previous years but were postponed due to a pandemic, it seems that will be made this year. This means that in the summer that is coming to us, the tourist traffic will be increased anyway. From winter onwards, according to Ms. Kouroupi, there are various factors that will determine the course of tourism. For example, inflation or even the situation in Ukraine will be some of the challenges that will determine the further recovery of the tourism industry.