The Iran conflict is causing a rise in tourist cancellations and a dive in new bookings in Cyprus and to a lesser extent other countries whose economies rely heavily on summer visitors.
The U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, just as Cyprus’s tourism industry was reopening after winter. Then on March 2, as Iran launched a series of counter-strikes, a drone struck a British naval base on the island, triggering a wave of tourist cancellations.
The drop in bookings is the latest sign of the war’s broad fallout, from disrupted oil flows to mass flight cancellations and worsening economic outlooks worldwide.
Daily cancellation rates for short-term rentals in Cyprus shot up from around 15% before the conflict to as high as 100% in the days after, according to data from U.S.-based AirDNA, which tracks such bookings. That figure has since dropped, but remained around 45% by March 21.
Greece and Turkey saw slight rises in cancellation rates, too.
Cyprus’ Hoteliers Association has seen a near 40% drop in March bookings and a similar reduction in April, the association’s director-general, Christos Angelides told Reuters.
“Since March 1 … we have had a lot of cancellations coming through,” said Nicholas Aristou, commercial director at Muskita Hotels in Limassol, which runs two luxury hotels.
“We have to protect the high season months to make sure we can turn things around by the time May comes along, otherwise the destination will be in trouble.”
GREECE MAY ALSO SEE IMPACT AS PRE-BOOKINGS SLOW
Budget airlines like EasyJet (EZJ.L) and Jet2 (JET2.L)demand for Cyprus and Turkey has waned and that demand has shifted to western Mediterranean destinations like Spain.
In Greece, where the economy runs on summer visitors, the impact is also being felt.
Aegean Airlines (AGNr.AT), the country’s biggest carrier, has seen a double-digit drop in summer bookings from Israel and Gulf states to Greece since the start of the Iran conflict, a spokesperson said on Thursday.
George Vernicos, secretary general of Greece’s tourism confederation SETE, said that there has been a slowdown in pre-bookings, although that was partly offset by a rush to book flights before oil price rises impacted the cost of plane tickets. He said that there was a drop in demand from Greece’s biggest markets in northern Europe and the United States.
“We are in a wait-and-see phase,” he told Reuters. “There is a restraint but the year is still running positively, also because the momentum was quite high before the war began.”
full article: reuters.com
The decline in excessive tourist numbers is probably the only good thing to come out of the illegal war with Iran and the continued attacks on human rights and international law.
why does Greece only depend on tourists and souvlaki cant they open some kind of industry where people can work all year ?
The private sector cannot turn a decent profit with VAT at 24% along with all the other taxes and problems inflicted on it. That includes the increasing cost of property, which the morons in ND think is wonderful. Basically, they have returned Greece to the 19th century insofar as manufacturing and production are concerned. And idiot Mitsotakis talks about AI centres as an economic solution, he is so stupid…