May’s air arrival tourist statistics for this year are up on every year for the past five, except 2004.
The 23,427 air arrivals that came this past May are nearly 10 per cent up on last year’s figure of 21,172 and nearly double that of 2005 (12,061), which was a dismal tourism year following Hurricane Ivan’s visit in September 2004.
Commenting on May’s figure, Minister for Tourism Charles Clifford said, ‘The fact that our air arrivals for May this year are almost 10 per cent ahead of May 2006 is certainly encouraging and demonstrates that the trend of increased air arrivals that started in January 2006 is continuing’.
The figure for this past May is 10.75 per cent ahead of that of 2003, at 20,909, when tourism was trying to make a comeback following 9/11.
This year’s figure is just slightly up, nearly one per cent, on the post 9/11 year of 2002 when the figure for May was 23,229.
By 2004 the local tourism industry was making a good recovery from 9/11 and that May’s figure of 25,502 was climbing up towards the pre 9/11 May figure for 2001, of 27,023, being just 5.6 per cent off it.
This May’s figure is eight per cent down on the 2004 figure, and 13.3 per cent down on 2001.
But, with regard to air arrivals in general, so far this year they are 8.7 per cent ahead of where they were last year.
Through May there have been 137,249 air arrivals, compared to 126,235 for this time last year.
‘In 2007 I am expecting our air arrivals to stabilize at about six per cent – eight per cent above last year’s arrivals. The fact that year to date our arrivals are 8.7 per cent ahead of where we were this time last year confirms that we are on target up to this point,’ said the Minister.
Mr. Clifford said the Cayman Islands tourism industry is performing relatively well in terms of visitor arrivals.
‘Statistics for May 2007 indicate that our tourism industry is holding its own relative to other countries in the region and showing strong year on year growth. During May we had three major multi-day events starting with the Cayman Classic, followed by NFL Quarter Back Challenge and culminating with the 9th annual Sustainable Tourism conference.
‘During our recent discussions in New York where we attended Caribbean Week we reviewed the performance of regional tourism and it was determined that only three countries in the region have posted increases in tourism in the first quarter of 2007 and Cayman is one of the three.’
But he added that there are continued concerns about the impact of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative on the region.
‘Through the Caribbean Tourism Organisation we are continuing the discussions on that issue with key decision makers in Washington. There has been some limited relaxation of the rules by Washington but if we are to level the playing field we need further concessions from our partners in the US.’
Percentage increases in the three main markets for this year over last year show that the US has grown by 7.4 per cent, Europe by 12.6 per cent, and Canada by 8.6 per cent.
Mr. Clifford said the tourism industry is looking forward to a good June and July with the start of the summer family travel from all three major markets and Cayman Airway’s new non-stop thrice weekly service from JFK.
Also, it has been the strongest May for cruise arrivals, with 130,555 passengers for the month.
This is up just over 16 per cent on last year, when there were 112,374 cruise arrivals in May.
So far for this year, through May, there have been 984,155 cruise arrivals, up 4.6 per cent on last year’s equivalent figure of 940,641.
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