According to a Tui study, tax receipts from tourism were found to be equivalent to €25 per customer per night, which is “very significant” for Cyprus.

A number of fee categories were singled for their financial contribution, with an impressive 10% coming from airport departure fees, which includes VAT and other corporate taxes.

Tui teamed up with PwC and the Travel Foundation and looked at 60,000 visitors to the island in 2013.

The research found that the impact of tourism is considerable when one takes supply chain activities into consideration.

“Supply chains and other services used by customers were found to generate almost 14 times as much waste as the hotels themselves (1.8kg of rubbish per customer per night from hotels compared with 25kg from the supply chain)” according to the study.

The Tui group also found that the positive economic and tax benefits were far greater than the small negative impact on the environment.

However, the research did suggest that over the long term, negative impact on the environment could increase.

The new research demonstrates the importance of understanding the “big picture” impacts of tourism on a destination, Tui said, suggesting that states could begin to develop better strategies.

Source: InCyprus