The most recently released figures concerning air and cruise ship arrivals confirm what many business owners already know
Tourism: Good & Bad News
Tourism figures for the Cayman Islands in the first quarter of the year show an overall increase of over eleven percent when compared with last year. However, stay-over tourism has declined over the same period, according to recently released Department of Tourism statistics.
Air arrival figures for January and February of this year were very similar to last year, but the numbers for March were down over twelve-and-a-half percent from last year. The 34,421 air arrivals during March historically the best month for such arrivals were the lowest for any March since the year 2000.
Typically, about 30 percent of the year's air arrivals travel here in the first three months of the year. If the same holds true this year, air arrivals will dip to approximately 291,500. This figure would represent a decline of some 11,000 air arrivals from last year, and 62,000 from 2000.
The general decline in tourism is not unique to Cayman and is being felt throughout the Caribbean region.
With as many as seven cruise ships in port simultaneously, there could be as many as 12,000 - 14,000 passengers coming ashore downtown.
While the War in Iraq most likely contributed to the decline of air arrivals in March, cruise ship passengers continue to stream to the island in record numbers. The cruise ship arrival figures for the months of December 2002 through March 2003 represent the four highest numbers in the history of the Cayman Islands.
An average of 174,797 cruise ship passengers
per month arrived here in the first quarter. For perspective,
the combined total of cruise ship arrivals in the first quarter
of this year represents over fifty percent of the cruise ship
arrivals for the entire year of 2000.
If the cruise ship trend continues, Grand Cayman might see the
arrival of two million cruise ship passengers in a year, maybe
not in 2003, but then certainly in 2004.
Meanwhile, it is known that the Department of Tourism, through the Minister of Tourism Hon. McKeeva Bush, is going all out to rebrand Cayman's tourism product and is commencing a programme to convert cruise ship passengers to stay-over passengers.