CASTRIES, St. Lucia – 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 it had been the best year ever for the sector.
“We haven’t got the November figures yet but we are expecting November also to have been a very good month and 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 cruse passengers for 2024,” Hilaire told reporters.
“October happens to be the best October we have ever had on record, the stayover arrivals for the month was 30,408, which was 15 per cent higher than last October and 13 per cent higher than October 2019.
“This growth was primarily led by arrivals from both the US and the Caribbean. The US was 25 per cent higher than last October and the Caribbean was 30 per cent higher than October 2023, respectively,” he added.
Hilaire told reporters that St. Lucia hosted a number of events in October that would have contributed to an upsurge in visitor arrivals.
“We also had 21 per cent increase in seats for October. So we saw in the United States the increase by 44 per cent, American Airlines service from Miami and Charlotte and we had 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 per cent, with the introduction of the Virgin Atlantic service,” Hilaire said.
Figures released here show that year- to-date stayover arrivals were up 16 per cent from last year and four percent from 2019.
Hilaire said that as the busy winter season unfolds, he expects all agencies to be on board to protect the industry and guard against visitor harassment and crime.
