It’s a good news-bad news deal for tourism in the sun-soaked Caribbean. Visits are surging but revenues are not keeping pace.
Analysts attribute the rising number of visitors to more cruise ships and flights to the region, and people taking trips they had postponed because of the economic crisis. But when they get to their destination, Caribbean officials say, tourists are spending less.
“The bodies are traveling, obviously, but the spending is clearly impacted,” said Josef Forstmayr, president of the Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Organization. “The larger destinations have it a little easier. They have more resources, they get better airlift, they have better products.”
Caribbean countries such as the Bahamas, St. Lucia and the Dominican Republic announced a record number of visitors last year. Caribbean tourism officials hope to surpass the more than 23 million visitors reported last year this winter season.
Registration for the Caribbean Marketplace, the region’s largest marketing event that will be held in the Bahamas in late January and aims to create vacation packages, is up by nearly 50 percent compared with last year, Forstmayr said.
“We expect a strong winter,” he said. “Overall bookings from all the islands are up from last year.”
