A new record high number of passengers passing through the Republic of Cyprus’ airports has been set this year, with it projected that more than 12 million people will have taken off or landed at Larnaca and Paphos by the end of the year.
The two airports’ holding company Hermes airports’ senior director Maria Kouroupi said on Tuesday that a total of 11.6 million people had passed through the two airports in the first 11 months of the year, with exactly 715,231 of them having done so in November.
This, she said, constitutes a seven per cent increase compared to November 2023.
“The levels of passenger traffic recorded in recent months is indicative of the consistently strong demand for air travel and the momentum Cyprus has. The very good results and the new record which is expected to be reached … confirm Hermes airports’ successful strategy,” she said.
She said it is expected that the eventual total figure for the year will be around 12.2 million, and that this will constitute an overall five per cent increase compared to last year.
Looking ahead to the rest of the winter season, she said new routes have been added from Larnaca airport to Kuwait with Jazeera Airways and to Moldova’s capital Chisinau with FlyOne.
Additionally, she said that from Larnaca, Wizz Air are now flying to both Cairo and Milan, British Airways are now flying to London Gatwick as well as London Heathrow, easyJet are flying to Amsterdam, Lot Polish Airlines are flying to Warsaw, and SAS are flying to Copenhagen.
From Paphos, she said, Ryanair are adding Amman, Liverpool and Birmingham to their schedule.
The figures come at the end of a year in which Deputy Tourism Minister Costas Koumis said Cyprus has “no room for growth” in terms of its summer tourism numbers.
He said during budget discussions at the House finance committee in November that the island’s tourism is seeing a “balanced increase” in the number of people holidaying on the island – a fact he described as “healthy” for the tourism sector.
He added that occupancy rates throughout the summer this year were “very high”, and that as such, “we have no room for further growth, especially in our country’s coastal areas”. This comment may also go some way to explaining why the relative increase in passenger numbers at the airports this year has been higher in off-season months.
He had earlier told the committee that tourism figures are set to hit a record high this year, with the number of arrivals on the island in the first ten months of the year up 4.6 per cent compared to last year, and up 0.8 per cent compared to 2019, the current annual record holder.
In economic terms, this increase in arrivals has seen tourism’s contribution to Cyprus’ gross domestic product grow from 10.9 per cent last year to an estimated 13.5 per cent in 2024.
Koumis added that the average tourist so far this year has spent a total of €90 per day, but is now staying on the island for just 8.56 days, compared to 9.59 days in 2022.
He also highlighted the positive impact on the country and increase in tourism numbers has had, saying, “the future of thousands of households depends on tourism’s course”, and that “this excellent course in recent years … confirms the good choices and the resilience of our product, despite the challenges we face.”
He said his deputy ministry’s goal is to “stabilise tourism at high performance”, and “further increase tourism’s contribution to the country’s economy”.
To this end, he said he is “updating” Cyprus’ tourism strategy to last until 2045, which he says will allow for “the further development, enrichment, and upgrading of the tourism product, through incentive plans and the promotion of major projects”
