CASTRIES, St. Lucia, CMC – St Lucia is predicting its best-ever tourism season this year after the island recorded a significant increase in visitor arrivals in October, Tourism Minister Dr. Ernest Hilaire has said.
He said that the sector is expected to shatter arrival records previously set in 2019, which statistically had been the sector’s best year ever.
“We haven’t got the November figures yet, but we expect November to have been a perfect month, so we are on track for 2024 to be the best year ever for stayover arrivals, and we have already indicated it will be the best year for cruise passengers. We are expecting at least 825,000 cruise passengers for 2024,” Hilaire told reporters.
“October is the best October we have ever had on record. The stayover arrivals for the month were 30,408, 15 percent higher than last October and 13 percent higher than October 2019.
“Arrivals primarily led this growth from both the US and the Caribbean. The US was 25 percent higher than last October, and the Caribbean was 30 percent higher than October 2023, respectively,” he added.
Hilaire told reporters that St. Lucia hosted several events in October that would have contributed to an upsurge in visitor arrivals.
“We also had a 21 percent increase in seats for October. So we saw a rise of 44 percent in the United States, American Airlines service from Miami and Charlotte, and the Jet Blue service from JFK.
“In the Caribbean, we saw increased flights from Inter Caribbean, and in the UK, the number of seats increased by six percent, with the introduction of the Virgin Atlantic service,” Hilaire said.
Figures released here show that year-to-date stayover arrivals were up 16 percent from last year and four percent from 2019.
Hilaire said that as the busy winter season unfolds, he expects all agencies to be involved in protecting the industry and guarding against visitor harassment and crime.
and then 