Tourist arrivals in Cyprus fell sharply in March and April 2026, the first clear hit to the island’s travel market after the war between the US, Israel and Iran began at the start of March. The Statistics Service said arrivals dropped 30.7 per cent in March compared with a year earlier and 27.6 per cent in April, pushing the total for the first four months of 2026 down 17.9 per cent from the same period in 2025.
The figures landed on Tuesday, when Deputy Minister of Tourism Kostas Koumis addressed the slump after the council of ministers’ meeting. He said it was “absolutely expected” that the developments of recent months would affect tourism traffic and that the comparison was being made against an “extremely high base.” He added: “We do not ignore the figures, but the figures do not justify great pessimism,” describing the data as evidence of a “gradual recovery of tourism.”
The drop followed an unusually strong start to the year. Cyprus recorded its highest ever number of tourist arrivals in January and February 2026, before the regional conflict began to weigh on travel. That contrast has made the current slowdown stand out more sharply, and the first four months of 2026 were described as the weakest since 2022.
For hoteliers, the concern is not only the size of the fall but how long it may last. A representative of the hotel sector called on the government to appeal for support from the European Union, saying existing help was not enough to absorb the damage from weaker traffic. The government is already subsidising hotel payrolls until the end of June 2026, while the deputy ministry says it is working to maintain air connectivity and strengthen relations with tour operators.
The immediate question for Cyprus is whether those measures can cushion the summer season after the spring collapse, or whether the first months of 2026 were the high point before the regional shock took hold. With arrivals now well below last year’s pace, the recovery Koumis described will need to show up quickly if the industry is to avoid a longer downturn.
