A hangover from Cayman’s long border closure during the pandemic as well as an active storm season have been blamed for weak tourism growth in 2024.
The islands saw a 2% increase in stayover visitors last year with 437,842 tourists touching down. That’s still some way short of 2019, when more than 500,000 people visited.
And rival destinations – like Turks and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands – have seen significantly higher increases.
Troy Leacock, former president of the Cayman Islands Tourism Association, said the comparative figures were concerning. He said Turks and Caicos, in particular, had been a beneficiary of Cayman’s slow reopening strategy after the pandemic and now has surpassed Cayman in terms of visitor numbers.
“We didn’t just pay that price in 2021 and 2022, we are actually paying that price now …we’re still a couple of years away from getting back to where we were in 2019.”
Cruise visitation, meanwhile, sunk to a new low of just over 1 million visitors in 2024.
Cayman closed its borders to visitors in March 2020 after the first local COVID-19 cases were identified. The airport did not fully reopen until January 2022, and rebuilding the flight schedule into the island has been a work in progress since then. The first cruise ships did not return until March 2022.
The picture for tourism operators started to look more optimistic towards the end of 2024 with hotels full during a strong December. And Leacock said he was hopeful of a 10% increase next year.
But he cautioned that Cayman needed to be back at 500,000 visitors sooner than later.
Speaking during a tourism panel at the Chamber of Commerce Economic Forum on Friday, he said new hotel development meant there are now 1,000 more bedrooms on the island – more businesses competing for fewer tourists.
Deputy Premier and Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan, speaking at the same panel discussion, agreed “we could be doing better” and said an additional $2 million was added to the tourism budget during an expensive advertising year in 2024, which could pay dividends down the line.
He also blamed an active storm season for lower-than-expected growth but said he was happy there had been an increase.
The deputy premier acknowledged the long closure during the pandemic was likely still having an impact.
Bryan added, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too. We were keeping ourselves safe, but it did have some damaging effects.”
Room rates fuel revenue increase
Revenue for tourism-related business jumped at a higher rate in 2024 with hotels charging 9% more for rooms on average, according to a Department of Tourism press release issued Tuesday.
Revenue generated by tourism accommodation taxes and fees for January to November 2024 was approximately $38.5 million, according to the department.
The release notes an increase of 578 new rooms, largely credited to the opening of Hotel Indigo, and 461 additional flights into the destination.
Director of Tourism Rosa Harris stated, “2024 was a standout year for the destination not only from a visitation perspective, but also for our business development and marketing efforts.”
Cruise in crisis?
Cruise visitors were not mentioned in the press release but figures released at the chamber conference show numbers are down by 15% and are almost half of what they were in 2019.
Bryan said the sector had gone in “totally the opposite direction” to stayover and was in crisis.
He said arrival figures had gone from almost 2 million to little over 1 million in the past five years and insisted the decline would continue unless Cayman built piers that can accommodate larger ships.
Leacock added that he now believes cruise piers are needed.
He said the statistics showed that the cruise ships have “already stopped coming”.
While he opposed the previous cruise proposal, he said COVID-19 had changed the picture, leading many tour operators to borrow money from banks, family and friends to stay afloat.
“They leveraged themselves to survive COVID. They have not recovered.”
Leacock, who owns Crazy Crab boat charters which mostly relies on stayover visitors, said many operators would not be able to shift seamlessly to jobs in that sector if the decline continued. Painting a picture of rival businesses hustling for tourists outside hotels, he said there would likely be a knock-on impact across the tourism sector.
“This idea that the cruise operator and the cruise industry can pivot to stayover is a fantasy,” he added.
Related Videos
