BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – A senior official of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) on Monday said the lifeblood industry in the region was on the rebound and predicted a two to three per cent increase in visitor arrivals this year, compared to a fall off of 3.6 per cent last year.

CTO’s director of research, Winfield Griffith, told a news conference at the agency’s Bridgetown headquarters that after suffering from the global downturn which hampered consumer spending in the world’s leading economies, Caribbean tourism was poised for a turnaround.

“Tourist arrivals in the Caribbean are on the rebound,” Griffith said, adding “there are very encouraging signs that we are seeing from the evidence presented by our members”.

He said while the overall decline was 3.6 per cent in 2009, there was progressive improvement in the quarterly figures presented by the CTO’s 33 member countries.

Official figures show that visitor arrivals moved from a 6.6 per cent decline in the first quarter, to a six per cent fall in the second quarter and a two per cent decline in the third quarter. By the last three months of 2009, visitor arrivals actually rose by one per cent.

“In total, quarterly arrivals reveal a scenario of hope,” the tourism official said.

“A redeeming feature of the whole tourism business in the Caribbean has been the high level of activity which has persisted even in the face of the crisis. That 3.6 per cent decline in business still resulted in over 22 million visitor arrivals in the region as a whole,” he added, pointing out that the decline was consistent with what occurred globally.

Hardest hit were the countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), which Griffith said “took the brunt of the depression” with a reduction of 12.3 per cent in visitor arrivals. Except for St Lucia and Dominica, all other OECS countries showed double-digit declines in arrivals last year.

However, Barbados and the larger Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries fared relatively better than their smaller neighbours in the Eastern Caribbean. They recorded a 3.6 per cent decrease in traffic, although Jamaica and Guyana showing moderate increases.

A similar situation transpired in the Dutch Caribbean territories, where there was a 3.7 per cent fall off, while Cuba had a moderate increase of 3.5 per cent and the Dominican Republic rose by a slight 0.3 per cent last year.

Arrivals to Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands both fell by approximately three per cent.

Griffith said that Canada was the main market for the region and remained “robust” with arrivals increasing by 8.6 per cent for the year.

United States arrivals, while down 4.4 per cent over the course of the year, displayed consistent improvement, based on CTO figures.

The first two quarters of 2009 showed declines of 10.1 per cent and 7.1 per cent, while there was positive growth in the latter part of the year – 1.1 per cent in the third quarter and one per cent in the fourth.

“The US market is clearly on the rebound…there is clearly reason for hope,” Griffith told journalists.

“When we take into account that the fact that the US economy is also showing signs of improvement…that is added reason for hope from that market,” he said further.

The CTO official said the European market did not do very well in the past year, particularly in the second and third quarters of the year when there were double-digit declines in visitor arrivals. During the first and last quarters, the fall offs were registered at 7.6 per cent and 6.4 per cent respectively.

“We are clearly seeing that there is a slackening of business out of the UK market. They fell by 5.6 per cent in 2008 and a further 11.8 per cent in 2009,” Griffith said, explaining that Eastern Caribbean islands are normally destinations of choice for UK tourists.

Cruise tourism has been “holding steady”, he said, noting that cruise arrivals to the region increased by 1.4 per cent after a three percent decline in the previous year.

Caribbean governments and tourism officials have been actively lobbying the British government to reconsider the rate of the Air passenger Duty (APD), a controversial environmental level, which Griffith described as an “onerous” tax that has the potential to “negatively impact” on arrivals from the UK, particular to Eastern Caribbean destinations.

However, he said it was still too early to quantify the effects of the APD that was increased last November.

Looking ahead, Griffith said that while there is likely to be a turnaround in arrivals figures, there is expected to be a lag in the rebound for consumer spending as people continue to tighten their belts during the downturn.

“Throughout an economic crisis individuals (consumers) are likely to be more prudent and this is manifesting itself in the spending of visitors to our shores. Although the evidence is not all in, from what we can glean from all the indicators, there has been some reduction in average visitor spending in the region.

“While the visitor arrivals remain at a high level, the average spending is seen in some instances to be relatively lower as visitors exercise greater prudence in their spending,” he said.

Based on the trends that emerged last year, the CTO official was upbeat about the Caribbean’s prospects for the year ahead.

“In light of the trends we have seen in the past five quarters which we have examined, we expect that there will be some improvement in the situation, APD notwithstanding, when we look at the overall situation.

“We could expect an increase in visitor arrivals in the neighbourhood of two to three per cent this coming year. Visitor spending though, given all we are seeing, will no doubt lag behind,” Griffith said.