Cruise ship passengers visiting the Cayman Islands spent an average US$116 per head in the 2023-2024 season, according to a recent report released by the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association.
The report by Business Research & Economic Advisors, entitled ‘Economic Contribution of Cruise Tourism to the Destination Economies’, was released at this week’s FCCA conference in St. Maarten and included surveys of cruise ship visitors across the Caribbean taken during an eight-month period between October 2023 and May 2024.
Passengers and crew were asked how many hours they spent ashore, how much they spent and what they spent their money on, as well as how satisfied they were with their visit and how likely they might return for a land-based holiday.
For the Cayman Islands, around 1,630 passenger surveys were completed to reveal an average passenger spend of $115.68, which totalled $118.7 million overall. This was broken down into different spending categories, which were: shore excursions ($102.06), food and drink at restaurants and bars ($23.27), taxis ($5.39), watches and jewellery ($57.61), clothing ($24.39), local crafts and souvenirs ($12.63), retail liquor ($3.68) and other purchases at ($12.63).
In total, 1,216,025 cruise passengers arrived in the Cayman Islands during the 2023-2024 cruise year, according to the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, down more than a third from 1,636,549 from the last time this survey was carried out in 2018. Of those, an estimated 1,026,325 passengers, around 84%, disembarked. Around 30% of the 425,000 crew also disembarked, spending an average of $76.10 each, which came to $9.8 million in total.
Those passenger and crew visits, along with additional spending by the cruise lines, generated a total of $161.5 million in cruise tourism spend, while direct spending by cruise lines and the cruise port on port fees, tenders, utilities and wages came to nearly $33 million for the cruise year.
Compared with the 2017-2018 cruise season though, total passenger spend was down 31% from $172.1 million, without taking inflation into account. Compared with 2018 figures, today’s passengers are spending more proportionally on onshore excursions, (59% compared with 54%) and less on food and drink (40% compared with 49%) even though the costs have risen considerably from more than six years ago.
In the 2018 survey, the average spend per passenger in Cayman was $105.17.
Passenger experience
According to the passenger surveys, 55% were on their first visit to the Cayman Islands. Around half of passengers who went ashore bought an excursion, with 77% doing so via the cruise line and just 5% doing so onshore. The average time spent on land was four hours.
While the Cayman Islands scored highly on passenger satisfaction, with passengers’ feedback giving 7.7 out of 10 for the overall visit, this was down slightly from the 2018 score of 8.1. However, Cayman’s ‘Caymankind’ reputation was maintained, coming in 13th out of the 33 countries surveyed for the friendliness of the residents.
How does the Cayman Islands compare?
Overall, the report said that 33.3 million cruise passengers and crew went onshore in the Caribbean during the 2023-2024 cruise year, spending a total of US$4.27 billion. This is a financial increase of 27% compared to 2018, although the cumulative effect of US inflation over that time is around 25%.
In terms of passenger spending, the Bahamas, with $473.3 million in total passenger expenditures, led all destinations and accounted for 15% of total passenger spending among the 33 destinations surveyed.
The Cayman Islands came in 10th out of 33 countries surveyed in both cruise tourism spending and onshore passenger visits. The per-passenger spend of $115.68 came out above the average of $104.36. However, the average four hours spent onshore was the joint 30th lowest time, only just ahead of St. Vincent and Trinidad at 3.9 hours.
Aruba and Guadeloupe shared the top spot with 5.3 hours spent onshore. Cayman ranked 18th in terms of satisfaction with the overall visit and 10th in likelihood of returning.
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I spend more than that when I go to town from North Side and the Government can’t even provide a car park for me to use. But they want to build a dock for the cheap-ass cruise ship passengers????!!!! WHY
Most of the average spend of $102.06 spent on shore excursions was kept by the cruise lines. Under half of this went into local pockets.
This means that the claimed per-passenger spend of $115.68 was actually closer to $60.
Passengers from our most frequent stopover cruise line can’t even afford a bus to the beach. Can the Dept of Tourism give us the number of stayover visitors for the same period and their total spend. They mostly stay in local hotels, hire cars, eat out at local restaurants most nights and still take local tours (Sting Ray City), and visit Pedro’s Castle, the Botanic Park, the Turtle Farm,and and other local attractions. They also DON”T swamp the roads in George Town causing traffic holdup.