The tropical island of Antigua has simply damaged its personal cruise passenger file with half 1,000,000 vacationers up to now in 2024.
Positioned in St. John’s harbor, Antigua Cruise Port has had 255 ship calls with 105,281 extra passengers than within the first semester of 2023, changing into one of many fastest-growing ports within the area.
That is the one port within the nation with the berthing capability to accommodate huge worldwide vessels. Vacationer and cargo ships make up the primary visitors, because the island’s financial system principally depends on tourism.
These present passenger figures are “extraordinarily thrilling for us,” said Cynthia Jacobs-Browne, officer-in-charge on the Antigua Cruise Port.
Summer time bookings are additionally on the rise, “we’re on observe for a record-breaking yr, and we couldn’t be prouder of our crew and our success at this level,” reaffirmed Jacobs-Browne.
Different Caribbean Nations Seeing Document-breaking Cruise Passenger Numbers
Out of the 31.7 million tourists who booked a cruise trip in 2023 on the earth, over 44% headed to the Caribbean, in response to the CLIA’s 2024 State of the Cruise Trade report.
Nations like Bermuda and the Bahamas obtained yet another million cruisers when evaluating 2023 to 2019. Bahamas has elevated 40% in comparison with pre-pandemic ranges, whereas Barbados forecasts an increase of as much as 200,000 cruise vacationers by the tip of the yr.
In the meantime, Jamaica might be the nation setting essentially the most information in tourism within the Caribbean in 2024. Authorities anticipate to host over 400,000 cruise vacationers this yr, stated Edmund Bartlett, the nation’s tourism minister.
One other nation experiencing a spike in cruise guests is Mexico with its island of Cozumel, a well known cruise ship port of name that has obtained practically 1,000,000 passengers within the first two months of the yr, a rise of twenty-two% in comparison with the identical timeframe in 2023.
This port, specifically, is the fourth most visited on the planet, with over 2 million passengers per yr.
We can not overlook Curacao, which is predicted to host 13% extra vacationers than in 2023.
“Cruise continues to be one of many fastest-growing and most resilient sectors of tourism— rebounding [from the pandemic] sooner than worldwide vacationer arrivals—and a powerful contributor to native and nationwide economies,” reported Kelly Craighead, CLIA’s president and chief govt officer.
