The Cayman Islands appears to be a hit with people who live in the
northern climes of the Americas.
They’ve apparently been coming to our shores in droves, showing a 35.8
per cent increase in visits compared with stayover numbers in the third quarter
of last year.
We say to them, welcome.
Welcome to our warm sun and balmy breezes.
The Department of Tourism pushed the right buttons this year with its
Get Warm promotional campaign.
The ad opens with a snowy scene and a thermometer at the lower end of
cold. As the mercury inches up the viewer is taken to a scene on a Cayman
Islands beach. Other colourful photos, accompanied by audio, shows people on
the beach, shopping, getting married and just generally having a good time sans
heavy winter coats, mufflers and mittens. It’s enough to entice anyone to leave
the cold of the north and venture to sunny Cayman.
The increase of visitors from Canada and indeed the US and Europe is a
good sign for our hotels and other stakeholders in the tourism industry.
The numbers are so encouraging that Premier McKeeva Bush is even
considering new travel routes to Calgary in the west of Canada to make it
easier for our Canuck friends to get here.
While it is understood that we also need cruise ship passengers, whose
numbers have been woefully down, stayover passengers do leave more of their
discretionary income on our shores by staying at our hotels and rental units,
shopping at our supermarkets, imbibing at our bars, eating at our restaurants
and taking in our attractions.
That income helps keep the machine that is the Cayman Islands running.
Those dollars affect every one of us who lives in the Cayman Islands
either directly or indirectly.
Mr. Bush wants to get 300,000 air arrivals to Cayman by the end of
2011.
We think it’s an attainable goal, especially now that winter is
beginning to set in on our neighbours to the north.
We’ve got a good destination and a good product.
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