Cruise numbers are up
While tourist air arrivals in October dropped slightly, for the first time this year cruise arrivals have shown growth.
October tourist air arrivals were just 2.6 per cent down on 2007 while cruise arrivals for the month were up 11.4 per cent on October 2007.
October 2008 air arrivals, at 14,710, were just 392 passengers short of last year’s figure.
This is the second month in a row that air arrivals have declined on the previous year but the only two instances in which there was a decline this year. April was the only month a decline occurred last year.
Despite the global economic crisis, air arrivals for the year to date (through October) are 8 per cent ahead of last year. For the year so far the Cayman Islands have had 254,998 air arrivals.
At the recent Annual Tourism Conference Acting Director of Tourism Shomari Scott outlined that the target figure for this year is 300,000 tourist air arrivals.
Compared to other Octobers, October 2008 has the sixth highest figure for air arrivals in the past nine years. The years following Hurricane Ivan, which damaged 90 per cent of buildings on Grand Cayman in 2004, performed the worst and the years preceding the hurricane performed the best. The highest figure for October in the past nine years was the pre 9/11 October 2000 with 21,684 air arrivals.
The number of cruise arrivals for Grand Cayman in October 2008 was 105,366.
This is up 10,778 passengers on the October 2007 figure.
Cruise figures began to fall in early 2007 after many years of positive growth and this is the first instance this year that there has been growth over the previous year.
For the year to date there have been 1.3 million cruise passengers, which is 10 per cent lower than the numbers for the same period last year.
In terms of cruise arrivals, October 2008 is the third best performing year for the month in the past nine years.
The statistics are posted at www.caymanislands.ky/statistics
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