Tourism dips in Cayman

Saturday, October 4, 2003

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman: The number of tourists visiting the Cayman Islands has dipped dramatically this year. And, worryingly for the industry, the fall is reflected equally among the numbers coming by air and on board cruise ships.

The Cayman Net News reports that for the first time in years, fewer than 300,000 people may come in by air this year and the growth in cruise ship arrivals seems to have peaked and numbers are on the decline.

Up to the end of August 22,422 tourists had arrived by air, compared with 23,961 in the same period the previous year. It was the fourth month in a row air arrivals were down.Cruise ship arrivals, which had been growing steadily, even in the early part of this year, dipped in May, June, July and August, although the total for the year is still likely to pass last year's figure of more than 1.5 million.

As recently as April all seemed well with 178,249 visitors arriving on cruise ships, more than 35,000 up on the corresponding month in 2002.

Soon after that Cayman's Director of Tourism, Mrs. Lania Rittenhouse, said she thought cruise arrivals for the year would top the two million mark.

But, even at that time, she predicted a drop to 1.4 million in 2004 and 1.2 million the following year, because of the competitive market, more profitable Mediterranean cruises and policy changes by the cruise firms.

That downturn appears to have come even sooner. From the healthy looking peak in April, the actual and relative numbers took a quite dramatic tumble.

All may not yet be total gloom and doom. The previous year's figure were much higher than 2000 and 2001. This year's figures are still well ahead of those two years, but with further falls on the horizon.

The figures, just released by the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, reveal total visitor numbers for the third quarter of the year were down by 7.4 percent in both the air and cruise ship sectors.

The individual figures for August show air arrivals down by 6.4 percent and cruise passengers down by 11.6 percent.

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