Deputy Minister for Tourism Savvas Perdios and Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs will sign a Memorandum of Understanding on health and wellness tourism on Friday.

Speaking to CNA, from Budapest where he is holding contacts with tourist stakeholders, Perdios said Cyprus wishes to draw knowledge over this sector as “Hungary is considered as an advanced country in this field of tourism and this would assist us in developing and promoting this sector.”

As Perdios noted, attaining this knowledge will help the Deputy Ministry in view of the launching of subsidy scheme for the creation of infrastructure for services of health, wellness and assisted living in Cypriot hotels.

The €10 million scheme is included in Cyprus’ Recovery and Resilience Plan and is expected to be launched by the end of the year or early 2023 with a duration of four years, Perdios added.

Before Hungary, Perdios visited Vienna, Austria, as the European tourist markets are gaining momentum following the loss of the Russian tourist market, Cyprus’ second largest following the UK, due to the war in Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU and the western countries.

Perdios said arrivals by the Hungarian market marked an all- time record, assisted by flights scheduled by Wizz Air and Ryanair.

“It is evident that Austria and Hungary are registering significant momentum,” Perdios said, adding that arrivals from Hungary until September this year marked an increase of 63% compared with 2019 while arrivals from Austria were up by 53% over 2019. Arrivals from Poland marked the highest percentage change with 130% followed by France with 105%, Denmark with 63% and Germany with 28%.

2022 will mark the new basis for comparisons due to the new reality

Asked on the prospects for 2023, Perdios told CNA that the Deputy Ministry will wait for the final data for this year, before drafting its targets for 2023.

Although arrivals for the period of January – September exceeded 2.5 million, amounting to close to 80% of 2019, Cyprus’ all-time record year, Perdios said that 2019 can no longer be considered as the base year for comparison due to the new reality following the war in Ukraine.

“No comparison can be made with 2019 due to the lack of the Russian market. The new reality has more to do with 2022, we will wait years to see the numbers of 2019 concerning the Russian market,” Perdios said.

The Deputy Minister acknowledged that 2023 will also be a difficult year but added that this does not mean people will not travel due to price hikes.

Estimates and data show that total arrivals for 2022 will amount between 75% and 80% of 2019.

With regard to the next months, Perdios said that tourist arrivals will mainly come from individual tourists and last-minute reservations.

He pointed out that airliners maintain frequent weekly flights to and from Cyprus, noting that taking into account the absence of flights from Russia, flights from European destinations are higher than 2019.