CHARLOTTE AMALIE, US Virgin Islands (AP) – Caribbean tourism officials are worried this year’s record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season could scare away visitors who may falsely believe the entire region has been affected by the flurry of storms.

How to deal with the negative publicity surrounding hurricanes was one of several issues officials planned to tackle at the four-day Caribbean Tourism Conference that kicked off Sunday in the US Virgin Islands.

The meeting came as the record-breaking 22nd named storm of the season, Alpha, came ashore over the Dominican Republic and Haiti, days after a fierce Hurricane Wilma roared through the region before slamming Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Alpha later weakened into a depression.

Officials say the Caribbean’s frequent association with storms only makes life harder for the region’s fickle tourism industry, the backbone of many small-island economies. The region has seen a slow but steady rise in visitors since a drought in travel after the September 11 terror attacks.

“People’s sense of geography isn’t as sharp as we would wish it to be, so the perception is that when one country is affected (by hurricanes), all are,” said Hugh Riley, marketing director for the 32-member Caribbean Tourism Organisation.

A spokesman for the tourism department of the British Caribbean territory of the Turks and Caicos islands agreed.

“If there’s a hurricane off Barbados, we get calls (from abroad) asking if family members are OK in the Turks and Caicos,” some 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) away, said Kingsley Been.

The Caribbean received 22 million cruise ship and air visitors last year, slightly more than half of who arrived from the United States.

Adding to the region’s hurricane stigma, international media often refer to the entire Caribbean when covering hurricanes, even if the storms only affect a small part of the region, officials say.

“It’s almost a generic thing. People know hurricanes happen in this part of the world and once (news reports) show it enough, they stay away,” said Yvor Nassief, minister of tourism for the tiny eastern Caribbean island of Dominica.

Preliminary statistics for 2005 show tourism grew about five per cent in the Caribbean compared to last year, although Grenada and the Cayman Islands reported drastic drops in visitors after being hit by Hurricane Ivan last year.

“Just about everything on the island was destroyed or damaged,” said Brenda Hood, tourism minister of Grenada, where Ivan killed 39 people, obliterated 95 per cent of the island’s hotel rooms and caused US$900 million in damage in September 2004.

The island expects to rebuild 90 per cent of its hotels by December, helped by US$40 million (euro33 million) in relief aid from the United States.

One benefit to the recent upsurge in storms has been improved preparedness by governments in the region, Hood said.

When Hurricane Emily swooped over Grenada’s outlying islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique in July, emergency officials reacted quickly to alert residents and move vulnerable people into shelters.

“When Emily came, we were on the ball,” Hood said.