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Stay Over Arrivals Up 2.6% But Yachting Declines

The yachting sector recorded a sharp decline. [PHOTO: Stan Bishop]

The yachting sector recorded a sharp decline. [PHOTO: Stan Bishop]
The yachting sector recorded a sharp decline. [PHOTO: Stan Bishop]
SAINT LUCIA recorded a 2.6% increase in stay-over arrivals as at the end of November, with 312, 761 people visiting the destination during the first eleven months of the year. This contrasts with 304, 748 stay-overs visiting Saint Lucia during the same period last year.

The latest statistics for the island’s tourism sector were revealed during a press conference held yesterday morning where Minister for Tourism, Lorne Theophilus, said the sector had fared better than industry officials previously projected.

Theophilus said the tourism sector was faced with the closure of two properties this year, namely Cotton Bay Village and Smugglers Cove Resort and Spa, which affected the number of stay-over arrivals significantly. Nevertheless, Theophilus said the numbers add up to success.

“This means that we have an additional 8013 people who visited our shores during the year despite the various challenges that we faced,” Theophilus said.

Nevertheless, the island had a mixed bag of success and failures, with some key markets recording declines during the period. Below is a table of the island’s performance for November over the past two years:

There were 323 cruise ship calls here for the January-November period this year, compared to 316 during the same period last year. There was a 10.1% increase in cruise arrivals between January-November this year, with 582, 475 cruise passengers visiting the island, compared to 529, 127 cruise passengers during the same period last year.

Markets20142015Actual Change% Change
USA10, 77510, 513-262-2.4
UK6, 6946, 8471532.3
Caribbean3, 5684, 26768919.3
Canada 3, 9392, 397-1542-39.1
Rest of Europe752823719.4
Germany492253-239-48.6
France401317-84-20.9
Rest of World31241410232.7
TOTAL26, 93325, 821-1, 112-4.1

Source: Saint Lucia Tourist Board

The island recorded a 10.7% decrease in yacht calls to the island with 5, 808 yachts docking here compared to the 6, 507 yachts that visited during the same period last year. A total of 35, 107 visitors came to the island via yachts between January-November this year, representing a 14.7% decline over the same period last year when 41, 159 arrivals were recorded.

Theophilus said despite the criticism the tourism sector has received from “some who don’t seem to understand where the sector is going”, the sector had performed effectively this past year. With continued growth of the sector anticipated for next year, he said the numbers will continue to trend in a positive direction.

Theophilus cited the growth in the room stock in the next 14 to 18 months and the aggressive marketing campaign employed by the Saint Lucia Tourist Board (SLTB) as key spokes in that wheel of success.

“With strategic marketing, the approach that has been taken by the Saint Lucia Tourist Board towards the development of the sector has been paying huge dividends and we have seen a continuous and steady growth over the past three and a half to four years in the tourism sector,” the tourism minister said.

Theophilus said industry officials were “happy” with the continued growth and development of the Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival, adding that next year’s 25th edition of the music festival will realize greater contribution from this festival towards the promotion of the destination.

With visitor expenditure up by between 9% and 12%, Theophilus said, the tourism sector’s performance justifies the investment it receives from central government. He believes such numbers should make it easy for continued investment to be pumped in to sustain the momentum.

“So we’re hoping that with such glorious stats that when we move into our budget cycle we would have no difficulty getting the budget that we require to continue to push the destination forward,” Theophilus said. “The tourism sector has shown that we’ve been able to deliver consistently.”

Director of Tourism, Louis Lewis, said last weekend’s inaugural flight from Chicago to Saint Lucia was the culmination of SLTB’s airlift strategy for this year. He said the Board continues to make the destination more accessible, which has reaped many rewards over the past three years.

“We’ve actually marketed the destination by pursuing airlift to get visitors out of the major arrival pockets,” Lewis said. “We’ve had new airlift coming out of Boston into Saint Lucia with JetBlue. We engaged United Airlines in dialogue over the past three years and in the past two years in particular they’ve put on double weekly service to Saint Lucia coming out of New Jersey.”

Lewis said the new flight from Chicago to Saint Lucia which makes more accessible the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and that, based on the performance of the previous agreement with United Airlines, the twice weekly flight schedule from New Jersey has now been increased to three. All these arrangements have resulted in a 10% in airlift from the U.S. this year, resulting in a 7% increase in arrivals from the U.S. Visitor expenditure also increased, he said.

Stan Bishop began his career in journalism in March 2008 writing freelance for The VOICE newspaper for six weeks before being hired as a part-time journalist there when one of the company’s journalists was overseas on assignment.

Although he was initially told that the job would last only two weeks, he was able to demonstrate such high quality work that the company offered him a permanent job before that fortnight was over. Read full bio...

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