On Monday at the Caribbean Hotel and Tourist Associa
tion (CHTA) “marketplace” conference, President Nicola Madden-Greig continued to give updates on the Caribbean’s tourism industry recovery from the COVID-19 fallout, which she began at last month’s Caribbean Hotel and Resort Investment Summit (CHRIS) in April in Miami.

It is helpful to first review the annual numbers originally presented at the CHRIS conference. Quoting the London-based World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), she noted that its numbers for economic impact (including indirect multiplier effects) on tourism in the Caribbean of 11.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023 in comparison to 13.7 per cent in 2019 suggest tourism had almost fully recovered as a percentage of the economy, with an even more significant recovery in jobs, as it represented 15.2 per cent of regional jobs in 2023 verses 15.6 per cent in 2019.

She noted that based on global forecasting consultancy company ForwardKeys air ticket data (this excludes domestic travel)
— comparing 2023 with 2019 — overseas arrivals in the Caribbean are up 3 per cent, whilst the top 10 best-performing destinations are up between 27 per cent and 7 per cent, the highest performer being Curacao (Sandals effect?), with The Bahamas the lowest and Jamaica in the bottom half at up 12 per cent.

Comparing its global data for 2023 to 2019, this 3 per cent makes the Caribbean the top performer and compares very favourably with total international travel which is still down 25 per cent. Asia Pacific is still off 41 per cent, Europe is still down 22 per cent, the Americas is still down 14 per cent, and Africa is enjoying the second-fastest recovery but nevertheless down 12 per cent.

This may be partly because, as the Caribbean Tourist Organisation (CTO) notes in their quarterly data, Caribbean tourist arrivals increased more rapidly in quarter three and quarter four, with the most significant change relative to 2019 being in September and October of last year. Looking at CTO’s data for the main destinations reveal that the Dominican Republic is way ahead with a 25 per cent share; Puerto Rico is next at 12 per cent; Cuba at 8 per cent is closely followed by Jamaica at 7 per cent; The Bahamas is tied at 4 per cent with Aruba; and the US Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, Barbados, and Curacao are at 2 per cent each.

Comparing the CTO data by subregion, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) experienced the largest increase in 2023 over 2022 at 20.4 per cent, while the French Caribbean experienced the largest decrease in arrivals at -8.8 per cent. Looking at CTO’s data for main markets for 2023 over 2022, the Caribbean experienced the largest increase in tourist arrivals from Canada at 46.1 per cent, whilst the largest decrease in origin markets was experienced by Germany at negative 5.8 per cent. The all-important United States market was up 12.7 per cent, but surprisingly, the traditional UK market was down slightly at negative 0.3 per cent.

Moving to the all-important occupancy data provided by CHTA’s important data partner STR, overall annual occupancy was up by 2 percentage points in 2023 over 2019 at 65.6 per cent, while the 74.3 per cent for March 2024 was above the 70.9 per cent of the previous March. However, the leading country by occupancy in March 2023 — Jamaica at 82.7 per cent — did not even make the top three in March 2024, which includes Turks and Caicos at 87 per cent; St Lucia at 85.5 per cent (second highest again and up from 79.3 per cent); and Aruba at 84.3 per cent, displacing The Bahamas, which had 79.1 per cent in 2023.

Average daily rates (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR) — which adjusts the room rate for occupancy actually achieved to get average dollars earned per room over the period — for March 2024 at US$455 and roughly US$348, respectively, were significantly above March 2023’s US$399 and US$248. However, the top three destinations for ADR — Anguilla, Turks and Caicos, and Antigua and Barbuda — remained unchanged over the period.

She had also compared tourism spending across Barbados, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. In terms of searches, according to Mastercard, the UK has the strongest tendency to search for Barbados, while Canadian visitors were most likely to search for Jamaica, and unsurprisingly, US visitors were most likely to search for Puerto Rico, with a surge in May/June of 2023 and again in January 2024. Canadian visitors preferred to search for the Dominican Republic (DR) over those of the US and UK, however, with a notable surge in searches for the DR from all three regions.

We will continue her very important analysis in our next article.