Caribbean tourism ‘must build resilience to market shocks’

Hurricane Dorian

This was despite several challenges, said ForwardKeys, including a series of initially unexplained deaths of American tourists in the Dominican Republic, which led to a “temporary setback” for US bookings falling 21%.

The slack was picked up by other markets though; visitors to the Dominican Republic from Italy increased 30.3%, France 20.9% and Spain 9.5%, while some US visitors opted for Jamaica, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico instead, the latter experiencing a 26.4% increase in bookings last year.

Hurricane Dorian was the other major challenge for the Caribbean, with the Bahamas – Grand Bahama and the Abaco islands in particular – bearing the brunt of Dorian’s 150mph winds.

Bookings from four of the nation’s top seven markets fell “significantly” during August according to ForwardKeys, and were down in October and November before a “substantial recovery” in December.

Olivier Ponti, Forward Keys’ vice-president of insights, said: “There are plenty of opportunities for the destination to grow. Most significantly, an analysis of flight searches shows there is strong interest in the Caribbean from source markets which have very limited direct connectivity.

“For example, large numbers of people look for flights to Nassau from Paris, Milan, Warsaw, Rome and Zurich. This suggests that if new direct flights were established, many more visitors would come.”

Comito, chief executive and director general the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association, added: “As a regional destination, one of the most useful things we can do is encourage collaboration between countries to build resilience to market shocks.”