Cyprus is once more performing its favorite national sport — declaring record tourism before anyone checks the receipts.
Deputy Minister Kostas Koumis appeared before Parliament’s Finance Committee on Friday to announce that 2025 will be, naturally, “another record year.” He did not mention that this phrase has been repeated annually since the invention of PowerPoint.
Tourism, he said, now makes up 14% of GDP, up from 13.3% the year before. An impressive 0.7% increase — roughly the price of a coffee per tourist if divided by optimism.
Between January and September, arrivals jumped 10.3%, and over three years, 41%. Never mind that 2022 still counted pandemic recovery — progress looks better when you start at the bottom of a crater.
Records, Charts, and Other Forms of Self-Love
Koumis proudly informed MPs that the first nine months of 2025 were “the best in the country’s tourism history.”
In fairness, they probably were. Cyprus has been measuring success mostly in beach chairs sold and selfies taken at sunset.
According to the Deputy Minister, Cyprus now ranks first in the EU for growth in licensed accommodation stays and first in tourism revenue growth among Mediterranean countries. This is, of course, the kind of first place you win when everyone else is busy counting droughts, fires, and sustainability conferences.
Tourism revenue for the first half of 2025 rose 21.3%, though the average Cypriot hotel worker saw approximately zero percent of that increase.
And because no speech is complete without a promise, Koumis assured Parliament that the long-awaited National Tourism Strategy will be approved “soon.” In Cyprus, “soon” is a poetic concept, measured in election cycles and press releases.
A Summer of Statistics
To be fair, Cyprus remains sunny, charming, and entirely capable of generating numbers that look good on paper. The beaches are real, the weather is kind, and the optimism — well, the optimism could power the entire grid.
So yes, tourism is booming again in 2025. And 2026 will be even better, assuming one defines “better” as “more press conferences.”