Puerto Rico’s Tourism Bounces Back Better and Stronger
San Juan hosted the 15th Caribbean Marketplace. Within the framework of this event, Carla Campos, Chief Marketing Officer of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company, pointed out that Puerto Rico was visited by 410 thousand cruise passengers in 2017 and, from now to the end of June, the island nation is expecting to receive 633 thousand more passengers.
“This season, we have four more homeporting ships than what we had last year, when we had ten ships that were homeporting in Puerto Rico. We’ll have 14 and that’s significant. We’re talking about this season, not the future.
All in all, we are forecasting that the next season (2018-2019) will be record breaking. We’ll have 1.7 million passengers to Puerto Rico in the 2018-2019 season. That represents an economic impact of 250 million dollars in our economy,” she said.
“Our cruising operations are mainly focused on the winter season. San Juan is a homeport as well, which means that a lot of passengers come through our airport and embark on a ship.
“When you arrive in our port, you are in Old San Juan, where you are able to walk freely and visit local businesses and restaurants. The diversity of attractions that we have allows passengers to have different options.”
On the other hand, two weeks after the impact of hurricane Maria, the country was receiving about 20 flights per day. Today, it is receiving 110 daily flights and increasing. “We had 391 seats and we are expected to receive 81 thousand more than that. After the natural loss in capacity due to the hurricane, we are recovering at an extremely positive pace, quicker than other destinations that have been through similar situations.”
Carla Campos explained that their growth is driven by new balance and increasing frequencies. “Something that was important in the aftermath of the hurricane was communicating with the airlines and strategizing how we were going to increase that capacity as soon as possible. If we wanted one plane to come in, we wanted to make sure that that plane was the largest plane we could get. So we started to increase capacity.”
Over 120 properties are currently operated in the country, out of the 155 properties that were reported. That means that 12,458 hotel rooms are currently available, over 80 percent of our inventory. The rest of the inventory, 2,670 rooms are being rebound.
“This is where the opportunity comes, so it’s not just about the devastation and what we went through. It’s about how we recover better and stronger.”
In terms of new development, Puerto Rico has 25 percent more rooms that are going to be built and developed within 3-4 years, maybe sooner. That will bring approximately 3,830 new jobs as a result of that development. 1.9 billion dollars have been invested in hospitality development in Puerto Rico.
Moreover, the island presently offers 13 golf courses and 15 casinos that are operational.
