Cyprus bids to seduce Arab tourists
Cyprus bids to seduce Arab tourists
By Jean Christou
(archive article - Tuesday, May 16, 2006)
CYPRUS is attempting to woo back its lost Arab tourism and expects an increase of 18 per cent this year in arrivals from the Middle East and Gulf states, the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) said yesterday.

Cyprus was once a significant destination for Arab visitors, but numbers have been steadily declining over the past 20 years. However, with numbers down in practically all directions from the West, the CTO has turned its attention back East.

Christos Moustros, the CTO’s marketing manager for the Middle East, told the Cyprus Mail that after 1974 arrivals from Arab countries to Cyprus began to increase, peaking in the mid to late eighties when numbers reached around 20 per cent of all arrivals.

“At the time, Cyprus started to become a destination for Arab travellers and they constituted a substantial percentage of visitors,” said Moustros.
Of course, Cyprus was not hosting 2.5 million tourists back in the eighties, so the percentage was somewhat relative, he said. However, in the space of 20 years, numbers from Arab countries dropped to only two per cent of all incoming tourists, which translates to some 50,000 visitors.

Between 2003 and 2005, the number of Arab tourists fell over 20 per cent, while at the same time tourism from Israel jumped 50 per cent. The decline in Arab tourism, however, slowed between 2004 and 2005 to around 2 per cent, which indicated that Middle Eastern visitors had started to return to the island.

Moustros put the fall down to Cyprus tourism turning its attention to EU markets; the CTO’s office in Dubai was closed in the early nineties. “We went back to Dubai in 2005 and we have been able to launch a successful campaign,” said Moustros.

“For the first time since then, we have been to all 10 countries in the Middle East in the past year and people there are beginning to learn about Cyprus all over again.”

He said that since re-entering the market, tourism from Arab countries had shot up 18 per cent in the first few months and the forecast was an 18 per cent increase by the end of the year.

Moustros said the biggest number would likely be Lebanese. Some 6,000-7,000 Lebanese visit Cyprus, followed by tourists from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. But the CTO hopes to bring in more Egyptian visitors. “We are very serious about these markets,” said Moustros.

As to the attraction of Cyprus for Arab visitors, Moustros said EU accession had helped in that Arab visitors could view their trip as a holiday in Europe, while at the same time Cyprus is close enough to the Middle East in terms of its hospitality, food and culture to make it attractive to Arab tourists.

Also for many Arab tourists coming from the desert-like Gulf States, Cyprus offers beaches, mountains and rural villages – “things they don’t have in their own countries,” he said. “We are their nearest EU destination and the flight connections are good,” said Moustros.