Visitor numbers rising higher than ever
Owen Roberts International Airport, Grand Cayman
(CNS): Another record was smashed last month for Cayman’s overnight visitors with the best numbers during the month of April since records began. There were 46,079 visitors to Cayman, a near 18% increase on last year and the first time the destination welcomed over 40,000 stay-over visitors in the month of April. Cruise arrivals increased by 2.17%, with almost 155,000 passengers coming to George Town, despite last month’s fearmongering by the premier that ship numbers were falling in the absence of piers.
As tourism continues to grow spending is also up, with guests spending around CI$305 million since the start of the year, the bulk of which (around 80%) came from overnight guests.
Although cruise visitor numbers are down slightly for the first third of 2019 compared with the first four months last year, the decline has been more than offset by overnight numbers. Based on spending patterns, the increase of almost 20,000 overnight guests this year over last easily cancels out the drop so far this year of less than 30,000 cruisers, as stay-over visitors greatly outspend cruise passengers.
The record-breaking April, which has added to the already long-term upward trend in stay-over tourism, was boosted by the CARIFTA Games, which took place between 20 and 22 April, and brought an additional 2,076 visitors from the Caribbean.
“Diversification in visitation is essential to increasing our stay-over performance and levelling seasonality,” said Tourism Minister Moses Kirkconnell. “Sports tourism creates opportunities to positively impact both visitation and total visitor spend. I am proud that the Cayman Islands will host the third-annual Cayman Islands Classic this fall and look forward to welcoming the teams and their fans from across the United States.”
The Cayman Islands Classic is an annual pre-season college basketball tournament that will be held in November. The tournament features eight division one teams who will compete at the John Gray High School gym.
How many tourists do you need before it’s officially a hell-hole there?
It will have new record arrivals every few month as we are building more apartments and hotels which more people will arrive! It is not worth to report the news.
Most of the money spent goes directly to the hotels. Most hotels are either owned by DART or Foreign corporations. Most employees in the hotels are not Caymanians.
This is why the port is SO IMPORTANT!!! For Caymanians!!!
9:16, Your first paragraph is correct. The second is bull hockey!
More visitors is not automatically means a good thing for the people of this country.
@ 3:39 pm , where are all the stay over Tourist hiding? In their Hotels and Condos with their bottle and steaks because the place has gotten too expensive for them to go out after they pay for their rooms .
How I am seeing the Cayman Islands Tourism being run and managed, is like a CEO running the Company with 2 different entities and one part doing real well and the other part not so good , but is putting all the energy and effort into the part that aren’t doing so good . And can’t see what part is the most important..
What more beneficial to the Island would 10,000 people more do for the Economy when the Cruise line is going to pay less to everyone who handle the passengers. You will have more work and less pay and a more overcrowded little Island .
Sadly, not stats reflected but what’s going on in the streets. A friend of mine who owns a dive company says he’s never seen it so quiet and the bars in GT look dead in the evenings. Where are all these stayover visitors hiding?
3:39 At their Airbnb’s, Luxury or not?
I don’t believe it.
Wander through Camana Bay during the day and it’s an empty bowling alley.
Regardless, enjoy whatever visitors are parting with their hard earned dollars in this ultra expensive la-la land.
Once you proceed with ruining the environment and creating this ridiculous concrete jungle that the news outlets are full of stories about, people will definitely STOP coming to Cayman. Or at least the people you WANT coming to Cayman.
Better yet, as people start getting wind of the rampant homophobia, giant stinking dump, lack of garbage collection, crime that goes on and unpunished, corruption, and grave lack of democracy they’ll just ignore anything Cayman related.
Good luck.
I used to go to C Bay to look at the local crafts. Since they closed the craft market there is no reason for me to go. It doesn’t have that Caribbean ambience I like.
12:48 Ditto!
What a weird litmus. Camana Bay is of near-zero holiday retail appeal to clothed visitors from civilization; where there are acres of actual strip malls and Apple stores.
1:59 And Amazon where one can buy things like Rolex watches, cheaper.
Get with the times Cayman!
How exactly do we measure spending by the stay over visitor?
And if we destroy all the coral in the waterfront, what are these stayover tourists coming to see?
This development will likely kill off most of the coral on the entire west side of the island. The devastation will not be isolated to GT harbor.
This is like claiming 50 story buildings will cause parrots to go extinct.
You clearly don’t understand how the currents will carry the silt and choke the reefs. It’s a lot easier to contain the destruction caused by a 50 story sky scraper to the construction site.
Anon 3:18 My god, how young were you when you dropped out of middle school?!?!
10:34 To hide their monies and confine themselves at their wonderful Airbnb rentals!
That they own themselves with no locals gaining any benefit.
If rising stay-over tourism is going to be an important trend to maintain, and not something we take for granted every year, DoT/CITA, and any other agencies tasked with mgmt, shouldn’t get too complacent with the status quo. We should regularly audit the visitor arrival, stay, and departure experience with an eye for improving quality, safety, and minimizing stress. Our road signage remains inadequate both to and from the airport and hotel tourism zones. Remediating the eyesore corridors of industrial park should be a higher priority, as should pedestrian lighting on West Bay Road, and there remains no consistent visual roundabout instructions at our 35+ traffic circles. Easy things we could fix, but seem to ignore, even with avoidable deaths, robberies and self-defeating headlines.
9:34 It would be helpful if the speed zone signs said MPH.
How do Tourists know if Km or MPH?
Quite confusing and discussed often.
No! Vehicles should have the speedometers marked to show MPH, rental cars especially should be failed at inspection if they do not show MPH.
10:23 Vehicle speedometers should be in MPH you say, how does that match up to just a number (without MPH nor Km) on Speed Zone signs?
Sorry, your points make too much sense and are too easy to implement, they fall outside the scope of this current government.
Can someone in Gov’t please give a breakdown on what Stayover guests spend their money on? Bar, Resaurants, airplane tickets,hotel, food in hotel, car rental, Fishing, Stingray city, Diving, Turtle center, Hell, Pedro st James etc. That way we can see how much people benefit Gov’t own businesses.
No one can understand I say or you say. We need to see the money that was spent with which groups. Who really benefit Cayman owned businessses.
No such stats, just anecdotal comments from individual stakeholders. It’s like asking DoT for an efficacy report on the million dollar Sponge Bob Square Pants gambit, the NYC ice cream giveaway, Panama hooker-junkets, and weird underwater flower videos that nobody sees. The beauty of these fatcat positions is that there is no master vision, nobody keeps track of stats, the piles of money spent, or any subsequent attributable conversion. Any improvement in arrival figures is automatically ascribed to the success of their amateur-hour marketing efforts, rather than macro prosperity travel patterns, which they had no impact on. Rest assured, either way, they will always congratulate themselves.
Maybe we should expand the airport again, which is already at maximum capacity, instead of wasting money on a port that we don’t need?
A couple years back you were probably also arguing against the airport redevelopment project.
Sounds like a real donkey….
I was not the original poster, but a couple of years ago I was arguing for a new terminal to be built further down the runway, while keeping the old airport operational. That way we would have had two airport terminals today, at half the cost.
The truth is, most of every day the airport sits empty. Capacity only approaches limitation because of poor flight schedule management. We refuse to plan for and manage the passenger arrival and departure experience, so that our guests and residents aren’t all arriving and departing in queues at the same time. CAL revels in needlessly going head-to-head playing this “connection” game despite having no codeshare affiliation, maximum schedule flexibility, and with bottomless subsidy, no requirement to be profitable.
10.39am I think your apt term “bottomless subsidy” might also be applied to the Civil Service.
8:41 Jetways! Seems only the CIG is not embarrassed that there are none.
Always shooting above your stature, eh?
Jetways in Cayman are simply idiotic from a cost:benefit perspective.
Travel a bit and you will learn quickly just how many major airports don’t have them, and for good reason.
ORIA is not even a major airport in the global sense.
SMH…
I am a world traveler. I did not like getting soaked disembarking my flight last August at ORIA, a simplistic airport, especially in this day and age.
6.21am But did you notice those magnificent arches soaring into the sky, this alone makes ORIA a world class airport according to the locals. Next time bring your umbrella on board.
8:07 A better idea is to have each airline advise their passengers to bring umbrellas on board in case of rain when they land at ORIA, when they book. It is awfully cold inside the Terminal when one is drenched. Problem solved…
CaymanKind! Welcome to Grand Cayman!