Cyprus pins 2027 French tourism hopes on extra airline seats

Cyprus is banking on more airline seats between France and Cyprus to revive French tourist arrivals in 2027, Deputy Tourism Minister Kostas Koumis said after meetings with tour operators at the IFTM Top Resa exhibition in Paris, as reported by Cyprus Mail.

The optimism follows a weak year for the French market, which has been among the hardest hit of Cyprus' main tourism sources in 2026. In August alone, arrivals from France fell 46 per cent to 8,453, down from 15,663 a year earlier, according to figures released this week by the statistical service Cystat. The figure was also almost 50 per cent below August 2024, when 16,798 French visitors came to the island.

The wider market has also trailed last year's levels: 2.82 million visitors arrived between January and August, 7 per cent fewer than in the same period of 2025.

During the Paris trade fair, Koumis met senior executives of tour operators running holiday programmes to Cyprus, with talks focused mainly on 2027. According to the deputy ministry, discussions covered the French market's recent performance and the decline recorded in 2026 after geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The ministry said a significant increase is expected next year as the number of available airline seats between the two countries rises. Meetings also addressed efforts to tailor Cyprus' offering to French visitors' preferences and promotional activity to strengthen the island's presence in the market.

"The French market is undoubtedly an extremely important market for our country's tourism," Koumis said, adding that it had effectively re-emerged in Cyprus only a few years ago and still had room to grow. He described France as a market with its own distinctive characteristics that requires a more specialised and comprehensive approach, and said the Cypriot delegation was leaving Paris satisfied, particularly because of improved air connectivity. "It is now clear that air connectivity between France and Cyprus is improving significantly, which is a basic prerequisite for the further growth of the market," he said, stressing that Cyprus' responsibility was to offer "excellent hospitality".

Koumis attended the opening ceremony of IFTM Top Resa as a guest of his French counterpart, Serge Papin, who later visited the Cyprus stand. The exhibition ran from September 15 to 17 at Paris Porte de Versailles, bringing together leisure, business and MICE tourism professionals and representing 177 destinations, 1,650 brands and more than 32,000 tourism professionals, according to organisers. On the sidelines, Koumis met Egyptian Tourism Minister Sherif Fathy, with the two sides reaffirming tourism cooperation and discussing closer ties. He also gave interviews to French media, presenting Cyprus' tourism offering, infrastructure and services and the government's efforts to develop specialised forms of tourism, and discussed the difficulties caused this year by regional instability, which hit arrivals hard in spring before the decline narrowed over the summer.