KINGSTOWN, St Vincent (CMC) — The St Vincent and the Grenadines government is predicting a continuation of the record-breaking stay-over arrivals during the second quarter of this year.

“I’m happy to report that the same period this year, almost every major hotel in St Vincent and the Grenadines is at 100 per cent occupancy for the carnival season,” Tourism Minister Carlos James told a news conference, noting that around this time last year, in the lead up to the Cricket World Cup, hotels were at 75-80 per cent capacity.

James told reporters that airlines have recorded “very positive preseason bookings ahead of the Vincymas period…and, of course, one airline has signalled the intention to add additional seats to the destination during that period”.

James said that the Barbados-based Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) numbers show that in 2025, St Vincent and the Grenadines had a record-breaking 102,766 stay-over visitors, a 27.2 per cent increase on the previous year.

James said that for the first quarter of 2025, the performance indicators show a 12.8 per cent increase over the same period last year.

“So, we’re now 12.8 per cent up. There’s an uptick, and our local numbers are showing 2.9 per cent, but the CTO numbers ranked us at 2.8 per cent. There’s some variance there, but by and large, we are seeing an uptick in our first quarter performance,” James said.

He said the CTO data shows that during the first quarter of 2025, 11 reporting destinations saw growth from the United States (US), with 13 destinations exceeding their 2019 pre-pandemic performance.

“In terms of the arrivals from the US source market for St Vincent and the Grenadines, we saw the strongest growth of 74.8 per cent, followed by Curacao at 23.5 per cent, Barbados at 22 per cent and Antigua at 12.4 per cent as the best performances attracting visitors from the United States in the first quarter of 2025,” James said.

He said the numbers show that the country had the “strongest growth performance in the entire Caribbean region at 75 4.8 per cent” and was “the second-ranked best-performing Caribbean island with projected growth of 23.5 per cent”.

“You can see the distance in terms of where we performed, we outperformed many of the other Caribbean destinations as it relates to the visitors coming to St Vincent and the Grenadines and to the Caribbean region from the US source market,” James added.

He said that of the 20 CTO destinations that reported their numbers, 13 destinations saw positive growth performances, with the strongest coming from Curacao at 16.6 per cent, followed by St Vincent and the Grenadines at 12.8 per cent, Bermuda at 9.8 per cent, and Dominica at 9.6 per cent across all source markets.

“The destination’s performance, of course, is reflective of the transformation that is taking place within our country’s tourism. And I want to indicate key drivers for growth, including our tourism infrastructure build-out, a greater collaboration, as I said earlier, with stakeholders,” James said.

“And no doubt, the International Airport at Argyle had a significant role to play in what we’re seeing now in our transformation as a globally-competitive tourism destination,” he added.