St Vincent & the Grenadines records best cruise season in history

St Vincent and the Grenadines have achieved a new high in terms of cruise ship passengers arriving on the islands. This has been termed the "best cruise season in history" as the statistics surpassed the pre-pandemic numbers.

Minister of Tourism Carlos James announced that from January to December 2023, the island nation has recorded a 120% increase in cruise visitors. He said that the country has never seen 377 calls listed for one season, and compared to the last season, there were just 314 calls.

Minister James said that the 120% increase in cruise visitor arrivals shows that there were 138,337 more cruise visitors to St Vincent and the Grenadines than last year.  As part of these numbers, and the upcoming schedule from January to March 2024, St Vincent and the Grenadines will possibly welcome a ship almost everyday.

While speaking at the State of the Tourism 2024, he added that these numbers are significantly higher than what the islands experienced before.

Minister James, while making the comparison said that St Vincent and the Grenadines has now recovered completely and is moving beyond the pre-pandemic numbers. To keep the work moving at a growing pace, the country will also work with the taxi association and the financial institutions in 2024 to make sure that there is accessibility to financing and to enhance the fleet of vehicles within the tourism sector.

It is also to be noted that the country is now back on top as the leading yachting destination in the OECS, announced Tourism Minister.

He said that the country had a lead in arrivals for watching over the period of 2018 to 2022. The Minister was comparing with other OECS nations including Saint Lucia, Antigua and Grenada. The average number of yachting passengers was 39, 767 which is around 6% higher than the second-best performing destination.

The minister says in 2023, the nation also saw an uptick in yachting by 43% over the same period the previous year. SVG now has 50,476 yachting calls to the destination, and this subsector is anticipated to expand further in 2024.

In addition to this, Carlos James also said that in terms of visitor arrival numbers, all categories of 2023 visitor arrivals clearly show boosts in comparison to the same period in 2022.

The stayovers have increased by 35%, while the same-day return tourists have also increased by 83%.The tourism minister adds that the preliminary data collectively show that 2023 outperformed 2022 by 83.2%, almost doubling the last year’s performance.