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LAX to Cayman Islands will be shorter than flying to Hawaii. Minister Kenneth Brya explains the State of Tourism for Cayman Islands
Hon. Kenneth Bryan, the Minister of Tourism for the Cayman Islands, addressed eTurboNews and other media at the Caribbean Tourism Organization conference at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Cayman yesterday. He gave an overview of the state of tourism for the Cayman Islands- and it looks good.
As the Minister of Tourism for the Cayman Islands, I am immensely proud to host this CTO and IATA conference.
To our international media, I’d like to thank you for putting your lives on hold for a week to join us in the Cayman Islands.
I hope that you will find the meetings engaging and informative, and I hope you write lots of great things about the conference and particularly about our Islands.
To our local media, thank you, too, for being here. It’s good to have you with us. Although you are much more familiar with our tourism industry, I hope that you too will learn something that perhaps you didn’t know before.
I am very happy to be kicking off the destination briefings, and I will start by presenting insights from our tourism visitation statistics to provide an idea of how our tourism industry is recovering as we, like all of our Caribbean neighbors, focus on rebuilding this sector.
I would like to use our time today to discuss the Cayman Islands’ tourism performance for the first half of this year. I will also outline how the industry has been trending and where we plan to be by year-end. And note, I said plan to be, not hope to be!
But first, I’d like to give a very brief overview of some of the distinctive and appealing attributes of our three beautiful Islands, Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman.
Overview Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands is situated 480 miles south of Miami, which is just an hour’s flight away, and is close to our primary source market, the United States, making travel for our visitors quick and convenient.
Our two international airports are well served by some of the world’s leading airlines, and though we don’t observe Daylight Savings Time, local time is never more than an hour’s difference from Eastern Standard time.
More than 135 different nationalities reside within our shores, making us one of the most diversely populated islands in the Caribbean.
Aside from the friendliness of our people and the natural beauty of our surroundings, above and below the beautiful Caribbean Sea, our modern infrastructure and state-of-the-art communication systems place us on par with some of the most advanced countries in the world.
Tourism Advantage for the Cayman Islands
These are just some of the competitive advantages that make our jurisdiction stand out from anywhere else in the region.
When you add that we are politically stable and have no direct taxation – not on personal or corporate income, not on profits or gains from investments, not on properties or foreign exchange, it’s easy to understand why investors and tourists are drawn to our shores.
The Cayman Islands economy is driven by financial services and tourism, with the financial services sector being the dominant contributor. We currently rank as one of the world’s largest financial services providers, with the highest percentage globally of hedge funds domiciled within our shores.
Moving straight into the tourism performance results….
Between January and June 2022, the Cayman Islands welcomed over 114,000 stayover visitors, which represents 41% of the air arrivals recorded over the same period in 2019.
Between January and April, we moved from 6 to 12 to 23 to 25 thousand visitors, respectively, with April’s arrivals equating to 55% of April 2019. Visitation was moving in the right direction, with an upward trajectory, indicating that our tourism recovery was strengthening.
In June, arrivals were at the 26,000 mark, rising to over 32,000 in July. Our July arrivals represent 63% of where we were in July 2019.
I should note that 2019 is being used as the comparison because it was the last full year of travel before the onset of the pandemic. And it was also our best year in tourism, so we’re challenging ourselves by using the highest bar ever as our comparison.
So, where do we expect to be by the end of 2022?
What are we forecasting?
I have set the Department of Tourism a target of 40% of 2019’s tourism accommodation revenue.
We anticipate needing approximately 200,000 stayover visitors by 31st December 2022 to achieve this target. If my Department of Tourism delivers more than that, let’s just call it the icing on the cake!
But in all seriousness, judging by how the numbers are trending, I am confident that we are on target to deliver over a quarter million visitors!
Tourism Source Markets
Let’s take a look now at where our visitors are traveling from. In 2022 the USA remains our main source market, accounting for approximately 80% of stayover arrivals.
And our top three performing States are New York, with 11.0%, Texas, with 10.9%, and Florida, at 9.7%.
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