Thread by @FionaMullenCY

We delved into northern #Cyprus tourism arrivals in our latest @SapientaCY monthly report. The “2.7 million” figure cited here is totally misleading for a number reasons. cc @visitcyprus 1/ 🧵

https://twitter.com/knews_cy/status/1820852819483676945

First, the arrivals by air + sea (ex crossing points) reached 798,879 according to the same sources cited by the guy in the article. Also note that that “arrivals” = more than tourists. It includes workers (see the big number for Turkmenistan), students, returning residents. 2/

Second, most of the crossings through the UN-monitored buffer zone are Greek Cypriots + Turkish Cypriots. As we all know, many of those are repeat crossings: shoppers, schools students, people like me with friends in the north. Non-Cypriot crossings were 759,482 (down y/y). 3/

Third, a large % of non-Cypriot crossings are residents of the south. The biggest numbers in this order are Greeks, Britons, Romanians, Bulgarians, Germans. How many of those are holidaying görüşte and how many residents buying petrol and groceries? 4/ turizmplanlama.gov.ct.tr/2024-Turizm-%C…

*How many are holidaying tourists. (Had to switch to the Turkish keyboard to check with Google translate I had the right table.) So how do they get to “2.7 million tourists”? 5/

Two ways. First, you double count and report “passengers”. This is a term for airlines and it means people coming in for holiday and FLYING OUT to go home. This reached 2.2 million in Jan-June according to this article. 6/ pressreader.com/cyprus/cyprus-…

Alternatively, you mix apples and pears add up all those numbers in my tables: 798,879 air and sea including workers and students; 1,175,783 multiple-crossing Greek Cypriots; and 759,452 partly multiple-crossing non-Cypriots. Result: 2.7 million - magic! 7/

So how many tourists are there really? The article gives us a clue: 475,322 stayed in under-occupied hotels. Even if you assume (prob overestimate) 50% stayed in AirBnB-types, that gets you to 950,000 tourists in northern Cyprus v 1.2 million Jan-May in the south. 8/8

PS shameless plug

https://twitter.com/FionaMullenCY/status/1752959756455538971

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