Saint Lucia: Tourism sector booms with 42% increase in arrivals for June

Saint Lucia has once again broke records in tourism arrivals, rivalling all the best records till date. The date has showed that in June, the island saw a whopping 42 percent increase in arrivals for the month.

It was reported that all four main markets recorded increases, led by the United States with a 55 percent month-on-month increase.

The Minister of Tourism of Saint Lucia, Dr Ernest Hilaire, attributed this major success to the increase in seats over last June. Following this, there was a second daily service from Miami launched by American Airlines and a second daily service from New York by JetBlue, and American Airlines upgraded its frequency from Charlotte.

According to the data, the Caribbean grew 24 percent over June last year. “We had more flights from Inter Caribbean as well as Caribbean Airlines. The nontraditional markets, which is the group as the rest of the world recorded a 327% increase, and of course, a lot of that came for persons who came for cricket, the international teams and spectators,” outlined the Minister.

He noted that the island received spectators from India, South Africa, Afghanistan, Australia, and Sri Lanka, and the month of June was the fourth consecutive month of record-breaking arrivals and the fifth month for the year.

The data also showed that year to date, Saint Lucia is 15 percent ahead of arrivals recorded for the first half of 2023 as well as 6 percent ahead of 2019, which was the island’s best year on record.

This clearly showed the huge impact of cricket on the arrivals during the month of June. In addition to this, the island is expecting July to be even better than July 2023, which was the best July ever recorded, so the tourism officials expressed that they are really looking forward to some very strong numbers.

The positive numbers and the surge in visitor arrivals also demonstrate the island’s growing presence on the world map and among international travelers, making Saint Lucia one of the premier destinations for a vacation.