ST. LUCIA – Preliminary figures released by the Saint Lucia Tourist Board show that the number of tourist stopover arrivals, that is persons staying 24 hours or more, fell by 11% in September 2008, to 15,149 visitors, compared with 17,064 visitors who arrived in September 2007.
The volume of cruise visitors also declined as a result of three fewer calls being made by cruise ships this September compared to September 2007.
The number of visitors from the United Kingdom fell by just 1.7% from 4,894 visitors in September 2007 to 4,813 this September. The fall was not as large as expected given that UK based XL ceased operations on September 12th 2008 and two XL flights scheduled for the last two weeks of September did not operate. The number of visitors from other European countries jumped 39% compared with last September, from 441 to 605, led by strong increases from Ireland (up 87%) and France (up 55%).
Arrivals from the United States fell sharply, by 21%, from 7,033 visitors last September to 5,536 this September. This was primarily due to the fewer flights operated by American Eagle which cut back its service between San Juan and Saint Lucia to just one flight a day at the beginning of this September, a loss of three flights a day compared with 2007.
Although visitors switched to flights coming into Saint Lucia from Miami and Atlanta, resulting in both of these services operating almost completely full during the month, a significant number of visitors from the USA were unable to get to Saint Lucia because of the lack of air seats. Arrivals from Canada showed a 3% increase from 687 visitors in September 2007 to 710 visitors this September.
Traffic from Caribbean markets showed a 12% decrease compared with September 2007, falling from 3,729 visitors last year to 3,284 visitors in September 2008. LIAT operated 6% fewer flights this September compared with last. Traffic from Martinique grew however by 5%, from 618 visitors last September to 705 this September.
Saint Lucia received 9,323 cruise visitors in September 2008, a 51% drop from September 2007 when the island hosted 18,940 cruise visitors due to the fact that three ships did not call this September compared with last.
Stopover traffic increased by 5.9% in the first nine months of 2008.
Through the first nine months of 2008 the overall number of stopover visitors was 5.9% higher than for the same nine months of 2007, increasing from 217,959 visitors in 2007 to 230,789 visitors in 2008.
Traffic from the USA increased by 3.5% in the first nine months of 2008, up from 85,879 arrivals in 2007 to 88,856 in the first nine months of 2008. The volume of stopovers from the United Kingdom also showed good growth, increasing by 7.0%, from 58,884 arrivals in 2007 to 63,018 visitors in the first nine months of 2008. The number of stopover arrivals from the Caribbean grew by 0.4% in the first nine months of 2008 compared with the same nine months of 2007, with traffic from Martinique growing by 12.2%.
The number of cruise visitors increased by 5.1% in the first nine months of 2008 compared with the same nine months of 2007, growing from 405,444 visitors in 2007 to 426,097 this year, with cruise ships making eight more calls in the first nine months of this year compared with 2007.
