Hermes Airports is preparing for a record-breaking winter, with new routes and destinations from Larnaca and Paphos airports between November 2025 and March 2026, boosting prospects for winter tourism in Cyprus.
Available passenger seats to and from Cyprus during the winter season will rise by nearly one million compared with last year, reaching a total of five million seats- an 18% increase year-on-year.
According to the airport operator, this marks the highest winter capacity ever recorded for the island’s airports, giving a strong push to efforts aimed at tackling the long-standing issue of seasonality in Cyprus’s tourism industry.
Hermes Airports announced the encouraging news through its digital channels ahead of the start of the winter schedule on 1 November, reaffirming its commitment to strengthen Cyprus’s year-round air connectivity and help establish the island as a top all-season destination.
Thirteen new winter routes will operate this year, connecting Cyprus to four additional markets.
From Larnaca Airport, new destinations include: Barcelona, Skopje, Tirana, Bratislava, Gyumri, Timișoara, Suceava, Cluj, and Venice.
From Paphos Airport, new additions include Düsseldorf–Weeze, Amman, Haifa, and Yerevan.
The Deputy Ministry of Tourism has also stressed the need for collective effort among tourism partners to capitalise on this expanded flight capacity. Its long-term goal is to make Cyprus a sustainable, year-round destination by 2030, with 40% of arrivals during the November–April period.
Recent data already shows progress. Off-peak arrivals (January–April and November–December 2024) rose by around 42,000 compared with 2023, reaching 1.06 million visitors, or 26.3% of total annual arrivals. February, March, November, and December 2024 all recorded historic highs for winter tourism in Cyprus.
Deputy Minister Kostas Koumis noted that early- and late-season months are now drawing visitor numbers close to those of the summer period, with winter arrivals between November 2024 and April 2025 exceeding 1.17 million- a 23% increase from 2018–19.
Also read: Understaffing behind recent flight delays in Cyprus, union warns
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