‘It will take no less than three years for the Cyprus tourist industry to recover fully by the shrinkage of the past two years’, Finance Ministry foresaw on Thursday. These forecasts are included in the Pre-accession Economic Program to be sent to the European Commission shortly and are based - according to Ministry’s technocrats – on “conservative scenarios”.

Specifically, tourist arrivals are expected to drop by 5% in 2003 and to show improvement by 5%, 6% and 5% for 2004, 2005 and 2006 respectively. Should this become true, tourist arrivals for 2006 will reach 2.7 million.

The figures of the past two decades showed that 2001 was not a representative year for tourist arrivals, since it happened to be the best tourist year ever on the island. Despite the terrorist attack of September 11, tourist arrivals in Cyprus stood at 2,696,732.

According to CYSTAT data, however, 2000-2003 was the worst period for tourist industry in Cyprus, last seen in 1980.

The terrorist attack of September 11, the war in Afghanistan and the new Indifanda seem to have “conspired” against the Cyprus tourism, but slowdown is not attributable to external factors only. The increase in beds by 11% for 2001-2002 and the fact that a large number of tourists stay in relative or self-owned houses (3%) have contributed heavily to the slowdown of the hotel industry.