Tourism: Where do we go in 2025?
The Skift Research Global Tourism Outlook 2025, poses an interesting question: “If 2023 was the year of revenge travel and 2024 the year of normalization, what will 2025 bring?” Global tourism performance per stopover arrivals was 89% of 2019 arrivals for 2023, and is projected to be 98% of 2019 arrivals for 2024.
The Caribbean, one of the most tourism dependent regions of the world, recorded strong stopover arrivals for 2023 and 2024. For 2023 the Caribbean achieved 107.9% of 2019’s arrivals. Some outstanding performers were the Dominican Republic – up 25%, Curacao up 25.6% and Turks and Caicos up 36.2% over 2019.
Jamaica was up 7.7% over 2019 while Cuba was down 43% below that benchmark year.
For 2024, recovery in the majority of Caribbean destinations has continued apace. As at November, Curacao was 20.7% up on 2023, Aruba up 14.4%, Barbados was 10.3% up and the Dominican Republic up 6.4%. Cuba was down 7.9%.
Jamaica was 0.8% down January to September 2024 versus 2023, and this suboptimal performance can best be attributed to (a) an updated travel advisory from the US State department issued in the first quarter discouraging US citizens from visiting Jamaica; (b) Hurricane Beryl’s brush with the island at the beginning of July (c) Disruption of service by hotel workers in multiple hotels late Summer into the Fall.
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