According to CYSTAT data released on Tuesday, tourism arrivals in November 2006 fell 8.7% (-9.1 thousand) to 95,682 against 104,822 in the corresponding month of 2005.

This drop is linked to the British tourism arrivals, which slid 14.6% or 7.7 thousand to 45,091 compared to 52,817 in November 2005. Similarly, tourism arrivals from Norway and Germany dropped 46.3% (939) and 5.9% (787) to 1,089 and 12,582 against 2,028 and 13,369 in 2005 respectively. Tourism arrivals from Ireland, Austria, Finland and France slumped too.

On the other hand, arrivals from Greece showed an increase of 7.6% (672) to 9,511 compared to 8,839 in November 2005. Swedish tourism arrivals also surged 15.8% (410) to 3,009 compared to 2,599 in 2005, followed by Russia (+6.8%) and the Netherlands (+11.5%).

January – November

In January-November 2006, tourism arrivals recorded a drop of 2.7% to 2,329,902 against 3,394,407 in the corresponding period of 2005.

Revenues

Despite the drop in arrivals, the tourism revenues for the same period recorded an increase of 3.1% to £961.1 million against £932.2 million in the corresponding period of 2005.