The news comes following an increase of more than one million travellers to the region, giving a final total of 29.3 million.

The passenger growth was backed by an increase of 3.5% in visitor expenditure to $35.5 billion.

The US remains the Caribbean’s primary market with an estimated 14.6 million stay-over arrivals, up 3.5% on 2015.

However, it was Europe that recorded the highest rate of growth among the main source markets, led by strong increases from Germany at 8.2% and the UK at 4.1%.

Caribbean Tourism Organisation secretary general Hugh Riley said: “Despite terrorist attacks in some countries, the Brexit referendum in the UK and bumpy economic outcomes across continental Europe, arrivals from that market climbed by 11.4%, to reach 5.6 million.

“The strong European performance was evident by the healthy increases of between 6% and 16.8% in each month, compared to the corresponding month in 2015.”

However, he added cruise arrivals grew at only 1.3% to about 26.3 million while the hotel sector reported a contraction in visitor numbers.