New Deputy Minister of Tourism Constantinos Koumis on Wednesday said Cyprus’ goal is to increase tourist arrivals by 5% – 10% this year compared to 2022.
Even though this target is not enough to reach the Mediterranean island’s pre-pandemic figures, Philenews also reports.
Koumis was addressing the annual conference of the Association of Tourism Enterprises (STEK) in Nicosia.
He also said that – based on these estimated figures – if arrivals increase by 10% in 2023 they will total 3.5 million compared to 3.2 million in 2022.
But compared to 2019, they will continue to register a decline of around 11% as that was a record year of visits which totalled about four million.
“We do expect 2023 to be a good year, it looks like negative developments in the global financial sector have reached an end,” he said.
“We are no longer worried, we have a specific target and we will try hard to achieve it,” he added.
He also announced that the Deputy Ministry has started drawing up a new national strategy for tourism with a focus on 2035 which will be accessible to all. Unlike, he stressed, the 2030 strategy which was secret.