Cyprus Tourism Organisation announces the opening of a new air connection

The Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) has announced the opening of a new air connection between Larnaca airport and the Birmingham International Airport by the “Monarch Airlines”, next spring.

According to an announcement, issued here today by the CTO, from March 29, the “Monarch Airlines” will begin operating the new connection twice a week, on Wednesday and Sunday.

The CTO pointed out that the new air connection consists a significant development to improve the Cyprus accessibility.

So far, the “Monarch airlines” operate flights to Larnaca from the airports of Gatwick, Luton and Manchester.

The Cyprus Tourism Organisation also noted that a number of airlines, like Easyjet, Sky-Europe, Flyglobespan, Jazeera, Lufthansa and Emirates, have either initiated air connections with Cyprus, or expanded their routes to Cyprus.

“The CTO will soon announce a strategic plan for developing new air connections between Cyprus and other international airports”, added in the announcement.

Source: Financial Mirror

Cyprus passenger traffic up at Larnaca airport

Passenger traffic at Larnaca airport has reached a new high for the year but not an all-time record, as a total 529 flights over the next three days will carry 76,000 travelers to and from Cyprus.

In all, 35,000 passengers were expected to travel on Wednesday, 16,000 on Thursday and 25,000 on Friday, the most popular public holiday after Easter, the operator Hermes Airports announced.
Thassos Katsourides, General Secretary of the Asdsociation of Cyprus Travel Agents (ACTA) said that more Cypriots are traveling this year than ever before, probably because the public holiday falls on a Friday and many people are combining their vacations over a long weekend or have opted to take the whole week off.

“Cypriots are traveling to Greece, which accounts for more than half going by air or sea, while Britain remains the second choice, primarily due to the expatriate community there,” Katsourides told CyBC recently.

“Eastern Europe is still a strong attraction for holidaymakers, while Cypriots are seen going even to the most exotic of destinations, such as the Far East, but in much smaller numbers than any other national group,” he said.

News reports from the airport said that services seemed to be operating calmly, unlike the chaos that existed a month ago with check-ins being delayed or baggage lost and flights losing their departure slots. The two ground handling companies, Louis subsidiary LGS and Swissport-Vassilopoulos, have been fined a total of EUR 112,000 as they were blamed for the problems, while LGS has appealed the decision saying that the government ignored the inefficiencies of the present terminal buildings.

Paphos should move into a totally refurbished terminal building in November, while Larnaca’s new terminal building will be ready in November 2009

Source: Financial Mirror

Cyprus retail volumes up provision 11.6% in Jan-May

According to provisional estimates the turnover volume index of retail trade increased by 9.9 or 7.0% to 151.0 in May 2008, compared with141.1 in April 2008.

For the period January-May 2008 the index is provisionally estimated to have increased by 11.6% compared with the corresponding period of 2007.

Final figures for April show that the turnover volume index of retail trade increased by 6.9 or 5.1% to 141.1, compared with 134.2 in March 2008.

For the period January-April 2008 the index recorded an increase of 11.1% compared with the corresponding period of 2007.

Meanwhile, turnover by value rose by a provisional 15.2% compared with the corresponding period of 2007 in January-May 2008.

Final figures show that for the period January-April 2008 the index recorded an increase of 14.5% over the corresponding period of 2007.

Source: Financial Mirror