Perdios was speaking to the Press after a Cabinet meeting that took place Wednesday morning at the Presidential Palace.  When asked about tourist arrivals, the Deputy Minister said that the current year had started off well. "According to official statistics, we are at about 80% of the arrivals of 2019 in only the first four months of the year", he added and expressed optimism that 2022 will be a good year.

The Deputy Minister also noted that the Ministry took a lot of steps in order to achieve these positive results, pointing out that they visited 25 countries so far. "We have a right to be satisfied and to look forward to the rest of the season with restrained optimism, given that we do not have any setbacks either due to the pandemic or the war in Ukraine", he added.

Asked about the exact number of arrivals in Cyprus recorded so far, the Deputy Minister spoke of more than half a million tourists in the first four months of the year.

"Last year, in the first four months of 2021, we had about 50,000 arrivals. We are well on our way to achieving the goal we set for this year which is to do better than last year", he added. "Last year two million arrivals were recorded, (however) we will definitely not be at four million this year", he pointed out.

Perdios also noted that the number of arrivals from Russia and Ukraine that were canceled after the Russian invasion, cannot be replaced by the number of arrivals from other countries overnight, but the efforts made during the last three years have paid off with openings to new markets or support for markets that were not as developed such as France, Switzerland, Austria and the Nordic countries.

Source: Knews