Tourist arrivals in Cyprus marked their highest monthly reading since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic in October 2021, with total arrivals for January – October 2021 reaching 1.69 million, lagging significantly behind the pre-covid levels.

According to data released by the Statistical Service of Cyprus (Cystat), the arrivals of tourists reached 391,638 in October 2021, recording an increase of 288.6% compared to October 2020 while compared with October 2019 tourist arrivals in October 2021 were down by 10.3%.

For the period of January – October 2021, arrivals of tourists totalled 1,691,030 compared to 612,975 in the respective period of 2020, recording an increase of 175.9%, and a decrease of 54.3% compared to the period of January – October 2019 (3,697,055 arrivals).

According to Cystat, arrivals from the United Kingdom were the main source of tourism for October 2021, with a share of 31.8% (124,501) of total arrivals, followed by Russia with 19.6% (76,613), Germany with 7.1% (27,623), Poland with 4.1% (16,154), Greece with 4.0% (15,669) and Ukraine with 3.9% (15,254).

For a percentage of 87.2% of tourists, the purpose of their trip in October 2021 was holidays, for 8.3% visit to friends and relatives and for 4.5% business. Respectively, in October 2020, 81,8% of tourists visited Cyprus for holidays, 11.5% visited friends or relatives and 6.6% visited Cyprus for business reasons, Cystat added.