KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – It is gearing up to be a record-breaking year for tourism in the Caribbean as another Caribbean island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines has recorded an increase in visitor arrivals thus far in 2019.
According to the Caribbean Tourism Organisation, provisional figures for the period show that 232,916 visitors came to the island for the year thus far, compared with 217,453 in 2018. This is reflective of an additional 15,463 visitors to the destination.
The Canadian market registered the greatest increase for stay-over arrivals with an increase of 16.9 per cent while the United States registered an increase of 11.4 per cent followed by the United Kingdom with an increase of 10 per cent.
Yacht arrivals grew by 7.6 per cent during the months of January to May with a total of 37,926 yacht visitors for the five-month period in 2019 compared with 35,240 for the same period in 2018.
A total of 158,233 cruise visitors arrived in the destination for the same period registering an increase of 7.0 per cent over the 147,878 cruise visitors for the comparative period in 2018.
Concerning flights to the country – since the opening of the Argyle International Airport (AIA), in February 2017, three international carriers have been weekly operating non-stop flights to the destination.
Earlier this month American Airlines announced a second weekly flight to the AIA from December 2019 when the airline will operate the current Saturday service along with a Wednesday service.
The American Airline non-stop service to the AIA, will complement Caribbean Airlines’ weekly Wednesday non-stop service from JFK International, USA and Air Canada Rouge’s weekly Thursday non-stop service from Pearson International, Canada.
This month, Barbados and Jamaica also announced that they have also recorded an increase of visitor arrivals since the beginning of 2019.
