“Grenada, the Spice Isle of the Caribbean is worth mentioning as it too has seen an inprovement in tourism, especially through the cruise ship industry. Hoteliers are experiencing a promising start to the 2011 winter season”.
www.caribbeannewsdigital.com/en/noticia/caribbean-tourism-inching-back-2008-numbers-0
Caribbean Tourism Inching Back to 2008 Numbers
The Caribbean is attracting tourists in numbers not seen since the start of the global economic crisis, with several islands boasting new records, government officials said Friday. More than 23 million tourists visited the region in 2010, a nearly 5 percent increase from the 22.1 million that visited the previous year, according to the Caribbean Tourism Organization.
The tiny eastern Caribbean islands of Anguilla and St Lucia drew hordes of tourists from Canada and the US and posted double-digit increases. St Eustatius, a speck of an island that was previously part of the Netherlands Antilles, got a big boost from European visitors.
The Caribbean also was the second most requested destination last year following the US, according to the Web site, which arranges travel to requested destinations. While the Bahamas reported a record number of visitors—more than 5 million—the amount they spent is nowhere near what tourists spent in 2008 prior to the economic crisis, said Tourism Minister Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace.
“We have to get there before we begin to celebrate,” he said. The jump in tourists came mostly from cruise ship passengers who spend very little compared with those who stay in the Bahamas. This was the case even though 70 percent of the islands’ cruise ship passengers last year were on a Bahamas-only cruise, Vanderpool-Wallace said.
Cruise ship arrivals also increased elsewhere, with a 50 percent jump for the French Caribbean island of Martinique, 20 percent for Bermuda and nearly 18 percent for the US Virgin Islands.
“A whole new architecture is being crafted for tourism globally and in the region,” Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said.
The majority of Caribbean tourists who arrived last year came from the US and Canada, with officials blaming a drop in European tourists on a significant air passenger duty that Britain approved in 2009 and increased last year.
