The Caribbean is projecting more than 30 million tourist arrivals this year, however arrival figures for St. Maarten, especially cruise arrivals, are down.
The Caribbean Journal notes:
“The Caribbean could be close to breaking a record.
The Caribbean Tourism Organization is projecting that tourist arrivals to the region will exceed 30 million for the first time ever this year.
That would follow a record 28.7 million tourist arrivals to the region in 2015.
Tourist arrivals to the region were up by 7.3 percent in the first quarter.
“This performance was buttressed by lower oil prices and the strong US dollar, which increased the appeal of the region to potential visitors. The many air service agreements ensured that the region had adequate seats to facilitate the flow of travellers to and within the region,” said Richard Sealy, current chairman of the CTO.
The CTO has projected growth of between 4.5 percent and 5.5 percent in 2016”.
The above should prove for the St. Maarten Tourist Authority (STA) to hit the ground running as soon as possible in order to restore SXM’s position as a top destination in the Caribbean and revive economic growth.
Source: Caribbean Journal http://caribjournal.com/2016/06/06/the-caribbean-is-projecting-more-than-30-million-tourist-arrivals-this-year/
While Sxm government is sleeping and believes that tourist will just flock here in Sxm they are highly mistaken, front street is dead without cruise ships and even with cruise ships in port the vast majority go to French side for sight seeing, the taxis on Dutch side and the tour buses that run at the harbor just wee past the front street and then wee past the yellow building and the garbage mountain too the look out point and then to French side. On a normal day without cruise ships we do not have ten to twelve tourist walking on frontstreet and look a lot of stores are closing down. STA wake up and do something CUBA opens up this island will be completely dead before u start discussing anything just do the advertisement promotion of the destination.
SXM needs to shift focus on stay-over tourism as the main target of tourists we want to attract to the island. Yes cruise is important and we should remain competitive in this segment, but I feel that we have lost our focus and became short sighted with cruise as our main focus. Stay-over tourism from a multitude of markets (not just US and Canada, but also Europe/Latin America and Regional) should become our main focus for the moment, while we consolidate our position in cruise. Let’s get back to QUALITY over quantity. Let’s get people who spend money during their stay instead of cheap one day visitors alone.
It’s a disgrace that successive Governments have failed to make Destination Marketing our TOP priority compared to places like Aruba, Antigua and numerous competitors that are placing it at the top of the agenda. SXM marketing budget is a joke compared to theirs. Antigua is up in double digits compared to last year. Why? Because they MARKETING the hell out of that destination while SXM is asleep at the wheel.
Get the STA functioning already!!!