Cyprus Mail 30 December 2019 - article by Annette Chrysostomou
An increase of close to 7 per cent in winter tourism in one year means Cyprus is one of the EU member states with the highest increase in winter tourism, according to newly published Eurostat figures.
The figures show the monthly changes from December 2017 until April 2018 and compare them to the period from December 2018 until April 2019.
Compared to the 2017-2018 winter season, tourists spent 18.9 million more nights (+ 2.6 per cent) in hotels and similar facilities in the EU during the winter 2018- 2019.
In Cyprus, the growth in the number of tourists did not happen to an equal extent when comparing each of the months in both seasons. Compared to November 2017, the number of visitors was roughly the same in November 2018, 645,581 and 645,236 respectively.
In December, a slight increase was recorded, from 269,661 in 2017 to 297,997 a year later.
But the big changes occurred in January and February. In January 2018 264,917 tourists visited hotels in Cyprus, compared to 336,603 in January 2019.
In February there was an increase of roughly 50,000, up from 360,325 in 2018 to 411,319 the following year.
Following a slight increase (from 642,993 to 664,409) in the months of March, there was a fall in the numbers in April, when figures dropped from 1,127,323 in 2018 to 1,113,895 in 2019.
Winter tourism has increased in 25 out of the 27 EU member states with available data. The largest increase was in Romania (+8.6 per cent), followed by Croatia (+7.4 per cent), Poland (+7.3 per cent), Slovakia and Cyprus (both close to +7 per cent).
Only two EU member states reported a decline: Greece (-8.3 per cent) and Malta (-3.5 per cent).
The most popular EU destinations for tourists from around the world traveling outside their country of residence during the winter period 2018-2019 was Spain which represented 20 per cent of all non-resident overnight stays in EU hotels and similar facilities.
