Positive forecast for Caribbean tourist arrivals in 2023
Published:Wednesday | March 8, 2023 | 12:59 AMJanet Silvera/Senior Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
The Caribbean is optimistic its tourist arrival numbers in 2023 will surpass pre-pandemic records set in 2019, the best year ever for the tourism-dependent region.
Addressing the media at a Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) press conference in Barbados on Tuesday morning, CTO Acting Secretary General Neil Walters said projections indicated the industry will see a 10 to 15 per cent increase in arrivals over 2019, when the region welcomed 32 million land-based visitors.
“This means that between 31.2 and 32.6 million tourists can be expected to visit the region this year,” said Walters.
Similarly, the cruise industry is also anticipated to continue recovering and expanding.
“All berths in the region have reopened and are expanding. As more ships are deployed to the region, the capacity for cruises will rise and demand will stay high,” Walters predicted, noting that there should be between 32 million and 33 million cruise tourists visiting the Caribbean in 2023, an overall increase of five to 10 per cent over the pre-COVID-19 baseline figure.
His forecast comes in the wake of the Caribbean earning the reputation as one of the regions with the quickest recovery rates globally in 2022.
In fact, 28.3 million stopover visitors arrived on the region’s shores in 2022, an 88.6 per cent increase in relation to pre-pandemic levels.
Walters said that the recovery was bolstered by the relaxation of restrictions on international travel as well as strong demand in the United States, the region’s top source market for inbound travel. The United States cornered the market, accounting for more than 50 per cent of visitors to the region, a whopping 14.6 million travellers, 3.2 million more than the 11.4 million in 2021.
After two consecutive years of decline, the Canadians are also returning to the region, but their pre-pandemic numbers are anaemic and are among the lowest to contribute to the region’s return to normalcy.
However, there was a robust resurgence in European travel as a result of shorter travel restrictions, pent-up demand, and surplus savings accrued during the pandemic, said Walters.
“Strategic marketing initiatives and the restoration of some of the airlift capacity between more markets and the Caribbean have also contributed to the positive results,” he explained.
However, he pointed out that the industry’s recovery and growth were undermined throughout the year by negative effects, including rising prices, the intermittent supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic, labour shortages and disputes, global inflation, and heightened geopolitical tension.
Haiti showed a negative 20.3 per cent during 2022 as the industry was negatively impacted by the well-document crisis in that country, and the US Virgin Islands, which is normalising, showed a negative 3.2 per cent.
But all 27 Caribbean tourism destinations showed an increase in stayover arrivals, compared to 2021, of between 8.3 per cent and 16 per cent.
The top five Caribbean destinations include Puerto Rico, The US Virgin Islands, St Maarten, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Dominican Republic. These countries have now surpassed their total pre-pandemic arrival numbers, which are still being tabulated, said Walters.
Although the entire region has not yet surpassed 2019 numbers, according to CTO Chairman Kenneth Bryan, who is also minister of tourism for the Cayman Islands, the needle is certainly moving in the right direction.