Filenews 14 October 2021
The routed flights and not the charter flights will bear the burden for incoming tourism in the winter months and perhaps until next March, said Deputy Minister of Tourism Savvas Perdios, stressing that this highlights the importance of a targeted campaign both to maintain existing connectivity and to create new interest in establishing new routes.
Speaking from Munich, where he is with the aim of promoting Cypriot tourism, Mr. Perdios explained that the uncertainty that remains in relation to the coronavirus and the fears of a possible outbreak of cases during the winter months prevents tour operators from taking the risk of planning charter flights.
"Therefore, for this winter and until perhaps March, the main travel traffic to Cyprus will be through routed flights and not charter flights and this is because due to the pandemic, tour operators are hesitant to take the risk that a chartered flight entails," he said.
As he said, "this means for us that it is very important to maintain the scheduled flights of winter or even where we can increase them and in this context the messages we are receiving from Hermes, which says that the schedule of scheduled flights to Cyprus in the coming winter will be quite important, are encouraging".
"The important thing is that it seems that we maintain a large percentage of the routes (mainly from EU countries)," he added, explaining that the stability brought about by the implementation of the European digital certificate against Covid contributed to this.
"This means that the winter advertising campaign becomes even more important and implies that we will spend more money on the winter campaign compared to the summer, since in the summer months there is also the contribution of the tour operators themselves, who had to meet the increased demand," explained the Deputy Minister of Tourism.
According to Mr. Perdios, the campaign "needs to be more dynamic and more targeted with two aspects, to maintain interest in travel from markets from which there are routed flights, and secondly to generate interest from other markets so that we can have routes from new destinations as well".
He further explained that before considering the introduction of a new route by the airlines the first thing they are looking at is whether there is a promotional campaign. "They want to know for themselves if there are any actions or a campaign to generate interest," he said.
Estimate for arrivals at 40% of 2019
On the picture for 2021, Mr. Perdios said that although the official data were not issued by the Statistical Service, it seems that September moved correspondingly to the percentage levels of August.
As he said, this means that tourist arrivals for the whole of 2021 are approaching 40% of the corresponding arrivals of 2019, with September hovering around 60% of the corresponding period of 2019, while October is expected to move at similar levels due to the rapid increase in travel traffic from Britain.
"So the overall conclusion is that the second half of the year will be around 60% compared to 2019 which allows us, if this trend continues, to start 2022 from a different starting point," he said, recalling that 2021 began with tourist arrivals limited to 20% compared to 2019 data.
He recalled that in 2020 the number of charter flights from Britain (the main market of Cyprus) was very limited, while Russia never opened for charter flights.
"This shows that especially in the winter months Cyprus has to invest in the routed flights, not only in the tour operators but also in the individual travellers so that Cyprus can lengthen the season and fight with claims during the winter months," he concluded.
Mr. Perdios was in Copenhagen yesterday and today in Munich for contacts and events promoting the new direction and the new tourist identity in the tourism industry and the media. Moreover, by the end of the year, Mr. Perdios is expected to travel to the Emirates, Britain, Poland and Ukraine.
