The recession in Europe is now being felt in the Mediterranean holiday island’s tourism market with the rate of decline in arrivals accelerating in August — the peak month for holidaymakers.

Between January and August, 1.47 million tourist arrivals were recorded, compared with 1.66 million over the same period last year.

In August alone, arrivals were 291,583 as against 328,100 in August 2008 — a sizeable year-on-year decline of 11.1 percent.

There was a hefty 31.9 percent decline in arrivals from Russia, followed by Britain, the island’s largest holiday market, with a decrease of 11.5 percent and a lower 5.3 percent dip from Sweden.

However, there was a 15.8 percent increase in tourists from Norway and a 2.3 percent improvement in the number of Germans visiting.

The government estimates that arrivals will be down 10 percent for 2009 as a whole. To help ease the crisis, Cypriots were urged to holiday at home with subsidised hotel stays for lower income groups.

Almost six percent fewer Cypriots travelled abroad in July.

Most tourists to Cyprus come from recession-hit European Union countries.

Total tourism receipts for 2008 dropped 3.5 percent to 1.79 billion euros (2.5 billion dollars) from 1.85 billion euros (2.6 billion dollars) in 2007.

Tourism contributes around 12 percent of the island’s GDP.

Bumper tourism revenues helped the island achieve GDP growth of 4.4 percent in 2007 and 3.7 percent in 2008, and hotel bookings are said to be around 20 percent down this summer.

Cyprus’s economy shrank 0.4 percent in the second quarter to June after a 0.6 percent drop in the first three months of 2009, the state statistics department confirmed on Monday.

Year-on-year, GDP in the first six months shrank 1.1 percent compared to 2008.

Despite the gloomy figures, the finance ministry has not yet revised its GDP growth forecast of one percent for this year.

In 2008, tourist arrivals fell 0.5 percent to 2.40 million, down from 2.41 million a year earlier. It was only the fourth time year-on-year tourism numbers had dropped since 1996.

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Tourism, which accounts for about 10.9 percent of Cypriot gross domestic product, has suffered this year from the global downturn that has hit its key market Britain particularly hard and eroded the value of the pound against the euro, which Cyprus adopted in 2008.
Passenger survey data from January to April showed arrivals falling to 375,523 people compared with 411,054 holidaymakers visiting in the first four months of 2008, an 8.6 percent decrease.
Year on year for April alone, arrivals were down by 0.4 percent.

Tourists from Britain, who usually account for just over half of Cyprus’s annual tourism intake, totalled 84,526 in April compared with 93,862 in the corresponding period of 2008, a 9.9 percent drop.
Tourism arrivals from Russia — Cyprus’s second biggest market — fell 11.8 percent, while Swedish arrivals were down 15.6 percent.
However, there were more visitors from euro zone countries Germany and Greece. The number of German visitors increased by 56.5 percent in April and arrivals from Greece were up 23.7 percent.

Ledra Street, which had come to symbolise the partition of the island, was declared open by local officials.

It was split in 1964, during an outbreak of violence between the ethnic Greek and Turkish communities.

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It was the first meeting between Greek Cypriot leader Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat since Christofias was elected to the Cypriot presidency last month and raised hopes for reviving talks that are also crucial for Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.

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Five people – three soldiers and two Greek Cypriots – were injured after tables, chairs and bottles were thrown in a fight in the island’s Bedrock Inn. One was reported to have been taken to Larnaca general hospital suffering from internal bleeding and one of the soldiers suffered a fractured skull.

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