Air Arrivals Soar, Cruisers Start to Dip in Cayman Islands

Air Arrivals Soar, Cruisers Start to Dip in Cayman Islands

Despite high tourist arrival figures over the last six months at both the port and the airport, April saw a decline in cruise passengers while stay-over visitors continued to show a marked improvement. According to this month’s Department of Tourism statistics air passenger arrival numbers were the highest for April since 2004 with 30,824 people visiting the island.

This was an impressive 12.7 percent increase on air arrivals in April 2010 which was again fuelled by a significant increase in passengers from Canada. However, arrivals from across the United States and Europe were also up, even visitors from UK and Ireland showed a 29.2 percent increase on 2010.

Meanwhile, however, in keeping with recent complaints by tour operators, taxi drivers and business owners in down town George Town, cruise arrivals fell last month. Following a number of warnings that the cruise figures would begin to decline as the new class of mega cruise ships now plying the Caribbean are dropping Cayman from the schedules cruise arrivals fell by 8.7 percent. Less than 147, 000 people were on board the ships which docked in Cayman throughout April compared to almost 161,000 last year.

However as January, February and March saw higher cruise arrivals this year when compared to 2010 the year to date figure at the George Town port is still better than last up 3.9 percent.

However, arrivals at the airport are up over 8 percent so far this year with the arrivals from Canada up by 41 percent as a result of the new direct flight service by WestJet between Grand Cayman and Toronto. Canada now accounts for more than 10 percent of the passengers flying into the Cayman Islands. While the new airline has helped boost the figures from Canada flight arrivals from the US are still up more than 6 percent and from Europe by more than 11 percent.

April also saw occupancy rates in apartments improve and although hotel occupancy remained lower in April than last year apartments and condos had an increase of over 8 percent in their occupancy rates.

There are currently 4564 beds across 274 different properties. The average length of stay has also increase slightly among visitors this year, especially among those staying in apartments and condos. The Department of Tourism statistics reveal that the average length of stay has increased this year by a one full day with guests staying for average of 7.8 days.