In Ayia Napa, a popular seaside resort in Cyprus, the party has resumed its rights after two years of pandemic, but without the flow of Russian tourists, once the second contingent of visitors after the British, a void difficult to fill. “This year, we expected 800,000 Russian tourists” (as in 2019), explains Haris Loizides, head of the Cyprus Hotel Association. A threshold now impossible to reach because in the first six months of the year, only 17,000 Russian tourists came to the Mediterranean island, according to official statistics.
The Russian market “was wiped out overnight” following EU sanctions after Moscow invaded Ukraine, says Christos Angelidis, president of the Pancyprian Association of Hotel Managers. In 2019, before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the key tourism sector accounted for 15% of GDP and 20% of the 3.9 million tourists were Russians. According to the Ministry of Tourism, the absence of Russian visitors could represent a shortfall of 600 million dollars.