Delivering the region’s 2022 Tourism Performance and Outlook Report, the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) said despite global pressures, the Caribbean saw one of the quickest recovery rates globally in 2022 with 28.3 million registered tourist visits.

This represents 88.6% of the visitors who arrived in 2019, which served as the baseline year for typical tourism activity before the pandemic.
 

Arrivals from the European market increased by 81% in 2022 when compared to 2021, with the 5.2 million tourists from this market almost double the 2.8 million in 2021.

There was an estimated 28.1% increase in visitors coming from the US in 2022 and at the end of the year, 14.6 million American tourists visited the region – 3.2 million more than in 2021.
 
Destinations such as Curacao, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Saint Maarten, Turks and Caicos and the US Virgin Islands have already surpassed their pre-pandemic tourist levels.

Caribbean destinations can expect this recovery to continue into 2023, albeit at a slower rate, the CTO explained, predicting growth will be uneven among the destinations.
 

Chairman of the CTO’s Council of Ministers and Commissioners of Tourism, Kenneth Bryan, said: "As a region, we have responded with hope, strength and the determination to prevail.

"So although we have not yet surpassed 2019’ss numbers across the board in every jurisdiction, the needle is certainly moving in the right direction."