Cayman’s October tourism numbers have slowed the upward trend of this year’s air arrivals over 2022, with statistics showing a 5% decline compared to last year.
The numbers, which were released Wednesday, showed a slight dip from the 21,580 arrivals recorded in October last year. October 2023 ended with 20,568 visitors.
Every month, except October, improved over the corresponding month in 2022 and was pegged as having hit 86% of the 2019 statistics, surpassing the Department of Tourism’s projection of 70%.
Only October fell just short of that 86% target.
Cayman Islands Tourism Association president Troy Leacock, speaking on Wednesday’s episode of the Cayman Compass talk show, ‘The Resh Hour’, acknowledged that the October numbers were lower than expected.
“It’s good to see that we’re continuing to stay ahead of the 70% target that the [Tourism] Ministry and the Department of Tourism had set. We in the industry definitely wanted more than 70%. Our expectation was more, we’ve staffed up for more. I think the numbers for October were a little soft…[and] we saw that across the industry. September was a little stronger than last year,” he said.
Hoping for a strong finish
Even so, Leacock said, the industry is continuing to see air arrivals grow and the outlook still looks favourable.
“The pre-booking for December Q4 into next year are actually quite strong. Our expectation is that we won’t drop off in November and December [and] we will finish the year, and I’m sure that they will be very much above target of 70%. Hopefully we’ll be pushing into maybe the 90% or thereabouts for November and December,” he said.
He said last week, which marked the US Thanksgiving holiday, all sectors within the industry reported being packed, from hotels to restaurants.
“We’re hoping that the November numbers will turn out to be quite strong; the momentum has carried into this week. We’re pretty pleased with the the way that the recovery has been going,” Leacock said.
Director of Tourism Rosa Harris, in a statement on the islands’ visitor numbers, said the destination exceeded its goal of 70% of arrivals compared to 2019, for the first 10 months of the year, and she is confident that Cayman is on track to continue that success throughout 2023.
“We are pleased that our stayover arrivals to-date continue to trend above our targets, and this is indicative of a healthy and measured return to tourism,” Harris said.
She pointed out that the US remained the largest source market for stayover visitors, representing 83% of the total visitation between January and October of 2023, with US visitors accounting for 78% of the total number of arrivals in October.
Arrivals from UK, Ireland increase
Arrivals from the UK and Ireland in October 2023 were up 2.9% over the same period last year and represented 94% of 2019’s numbers, Harris said.
“Recognising the importance of this market for visitors, the Department has implemented a strategy to increase awareness of the destination in the UK & Ireland via an in-flight video advertising campaign on British Airways flights and an activation for prominent UK journalists at the recent World Travel Market London. We look forward to seeing this strategy pay dividends with a continued incremental increase in visitation from the UK & Ireland for the rest of 2023 and into 2024,” she said.
Leacock said those within the industry had to recalibrate their business models to adjust to the new dynamic coming out of COVID and, while comparisons are being made to 2019, he said the reality is “things have changed”.
“We’ve been able to increase the prices, whether it’s hotel rooms, whether it’s water-sports operations, charters, etc. I think businesses are being recalibrated rather than just simply saying ‘I want to get back to the same volume that I had in 2019.’ It’s about: ‘Where’s my revenue? Where is my cost base? Where’s my profitability?’ So I think everybody’s going through a recalibration. We shouldn’t really focus purely on ‘Ah, we’re back to 500,000 – job done. It’s really not as simple as that,” he said.
The DoT, in a recent statement, said there was an increase in the length of stay with visitors remaining an average of six nights on island.
This was the same as 2019, the department said, “showing a steady return to pre-pandemic nightly stays”.
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