Published:Wednesday | February 17, 2016
For the first time ever, the pace of growth of Caribbean tourism outperformed every major tourism region in the world.
“Caribbean tourism grew by an estimated seven per cent to 28.7 million visits, much higher than the projected four to five per cent,” the Caribbean Tourism Organisation’s secretary general, Hugh Riley, told journalists yesterday morning in Barbados during the State of the Industry press conference.
This performance, he said, was above the global rate of growth, which the UN agency, the World Tourism Organization, quotes at 4.4 per cent.
“Our region has set new arrival and spend records in 2015, far surpassing expectations,” he added, pointing out that in that period, visitors spent over a billion dollars more than they did in 2014, contributing approximately US$30 billion to Caribbean economies.
“That’s 4.2 per cent higher than the US$28.8 billion spent during the previous year,” he stated.
2015 is the second year in a row that the region has done better than the rest of the world, and the sixth consecutive year of growth for the Caribbean.
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