More than a quarter of a million visitors flew to Cayman in the first six months of this year, the third highest visitation number on record, according to the latest tourism statistics.
The tally was up 6.5% on the January-June 2023 figures.
The only half-year periods that have been higher were in 2018 and 2019.
US visitors accounted for the vast majority of the passengers – 84% – while Canada was the second largest, at 6.9%, and Europe third, at 4.4%.
Visitation rates peaked in March, with 57,040 arrivals, the second highest recorded for a single month, behind March 2019.
On average, visitors are staying six nights in Cayman, the tourism update notes.
The majority of those visiting – 87.9% – had come for leisure, while 6.2% were on business-related trips. Nearly 6% – 14,791 – were visiting relatives.
Cruise numbers still dropping
Cruise passengers numbers have declined considerably, hitting the lowest level in over two decades, Minister for Tourism Kenneth Bryan told lawmakers last week, as he delivered the latest statistics.
Between January and June this year, 634,212 cruise ship visitors arrived, down 14.6% compared to the first six months of 2023, when 742,553 passengers sailed into Cayman.
Cruise ships returned to Grand Cayman for the first time in two years following the COVID-19 pandemic and Cayman’s border closures in March 2022. Between then and the nine-month period to the end of that year, 743,393 cruise passengers arrived, and the following year 1.1 million came to Cayman. These number were the “lowest passenger arrivals in over two decades”, Bryan said.
In the first six months of this year, there were 197 cruise calls, 50 fewer than during the same period in 2023.
More air capacity
While cruise numbers are going down, there is cause for much optimism in the aviation sector, Bryan said, as airlines in the key US and Canadian markets launch more routes and expand seat capacity to the islands, the minister told legislators.
He noted that between June 2023 and June 2024, inbound seats from the US, Canada and the UK grew by 15% – rising from 63,096 in June last year to 67,224 in June this year.
According to figures provided by the International Air Transport Association, 418 flights arrived in Cayman last month, 38 more than in June 2023. There was an 18% rise in the number of inbound flights from the US, offering 50,817 more seats than were available in June last year.
With more stayover tourists arriving, the amount of room stock on the island is expanding to meet the demand and, for the first time in its history, the Cayman Islands now has more than 8,000 rooms for visitors.
Bryan said the addition of the newly opened Vida in West Bay and Hotel Indigo off Seven Mile Beach meant Cayman now has 8,060 rooms, which he described as a “significant milestone”.
He also noted that tourism revenues had been bolstered by a 16.9% increase in the average daily rate of hotels, compared to the first half of 2023.
This had led to tourism taxes and fees collected by government exceeding expectations, with a “whopping” $25 million between January and June this year, Bryan said, which was 9% above projections.
Expanded airline services
Among those carriers increasing flights were American Airlines, which runs a daily service from Dallas and which added a Saturday flight over the summer, and SouthWest Airlines, which has daily flights between Orlando and Grand Cayman until 4 Aug. when it will shift to weekly flights on Saturdays until 3 Nov. and then return to daily service for the winter season.
JetBlue will add a second flight from Boston on Mondays from 28 Oct. It currently only operates once a week on Saturdays.
The number of flights to and from Minneapolis-St. Paul will also increase later this year, with Sun Country Airlines offering twice-weekly flights from 20 Dec. until 12 April 2025, and Delta putting on three flights a week from 20 Dec.
The minister noted that seat capacity to and from Toronto, Canada had “effectively doubled” due to both Air Canada and JetBlue offering twice-weekly services between April and October.
Bryan said airline connectivity was “pivotal” to the success of Cayman’s tourism industry and that the increase in airlift into the Cayman Islands had set a “positive outlook” for the future of tourism.
Read the latest snapshot of tourism statistics here.
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Marvelous!
I am as pleased by the decline in the questionably profitable and certainly destructive cruise ship #s as I am by the increase in he lucrative stay over #s.
On the Toronto flights I think you meant “WestJet” and not JetBlue.