Tourist arrivals in Cyprus are at 75% compared to 2019, said on Sunday Deputy Minister of Tourism Savvas Perdios and pointed out that if one takes into account the difficulties tourism is facing, the percentage is "not bad at all".

Speaking in Paphos after a memorial service for people who were killed during the Turkish invasion in 1974, Perdios said 2019 was a record year for tourism as arrivals reached 4 million.

So far, we are satisfied, he said, and compared to 2021 we are in a much better position. Perdios added that last year ended at about 50% compared to 2019 and the aim is to exceed last year’s results.

There is reserved optimism for the remaining of the year, said Perdios and from what it looks like July, August and September will be very good. We have our feet on the ground and continue to praise the work carried out by the ministry in cooperation with the Transport Ministry and Hermes Airports strengthening existing markets and opening new ones.

Perdios said he did not want to think how tourism figures would have been if preparations did not start that early, adding his ministry began work three years ago when he took office.

Asked about the losses from the Russian market, Perdios said these are around 800 thousand and cannot be replaced overnight.  If we didn’t have these losses, we would have had an excellent year. Nevertheless, with “timely planning and an emergency action plan, we have managed to make up for 25% of the loss from the Russian market, attracting around 200 thousand arrivals from other markets which we have strengthened in the last years”.

He also referred to the difficulties which his ministry is facing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of the Omicron variant and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Cyprus, he added, is moving in the right direction and we see continued development of our product, new markets such as Germany, Austria, Israel, Switzerland, France, Scandinavian countries and Italy as well as other countries.