Caribbean Tourism Returns to Pre-Pandemic Levels With No End to Growth in Sight

by Bob Curley
Last updated: 3:50 PM ET, Wed May 29, 2024

Caribbean tourism has largely rebounded from a pandemic-driven downturn in the early 2020s and—if the plans announced by some of the region’s biggest destinations go forward—growth in resorts, visitor numbers and cruise ship calls looks certain to soar even higher in the next decade.

That's according to leaders who spoke at the annual Caribbean Travel Marketplace held May 20-23 in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Nicola Madden-Grieg, president of event sponsor the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), told attendees that the Caribbean surpassed its pre-pandemic arrival numbers in 2023 when 33.2 million visitors came to the region, up 14.3 percent over 2022.

“Experts predicted that the Caribbean wouldn’t recover until 2025-26,” said Madden-Grieg. “We proved them wrong.”

With 46 new hotels in the pipeline and an additional 14,000 hotel rooms already under construction, Caribbean tourism is poised for 5-10 percent growth in the next few years, she said, while cautioning: “We need to look at airlift and infrastructure to accommodate growth and keep overtourism in check.”

The latter message was not lost on conference attendees who got to witness the limitations of Caribbean tourism infrastructure firsthand over the course of the week spent in Jamaica. One day, a morning automobile accident on Montego Bay’s main coastal road was still snarling traffic in the late afternoon.

Another day, thunderstorms knocked out the lights at the Montego Bay Convention Centre, forcing a switch to emergency generator power. And some attendees staying at a nearby five-star resort—one of the conference sponsors—were without running water for three days, a problem that staff told guests was the fault of the local municipality, not the hotel.

Nonetheless, Jamaican tourism officials presented the most ambitious tourism growth plans of any destination at the conference. Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett told attendees that 2,000 new hotel rooms are scheduled to open in Jamaica in 2024, including at the new Princess Grand Jamaica in Green Island (between Lucea and Negril), the Riu Palace Aquarelle in Falmouth, and the Unico Hotel in Montego Bay.

Overall, Jamaica has 15,000 to 20,000 new hotel rooms scheduled for construction over the next 5-10 years, said Bartlett, including 10,000 in the Montego Bay area alone. “Jamaican tourism is experiencing an unprecedented surge,” generating $4.38 billion in revenues in fiscal 2023-24, said Bartlett.

Mass tourism is nothing new for Jamaica, of course. Perhaps more surprising are the plans unveiled by Guibion Ferdinand, parliamentary secretary in Saint Lucia’s Ministry of Tourism, who said the destination—known for its natural beauty, laid-back vibe, and high-end couples resorts but coming off March 2024 with the most monthly arrivals in the island’s history—would be adding 2,000 more hotel rooms by 2025. Saint Lucia currently has about 4,700 rooms, making the tourism expansion plan unprecedented in the island’s history.

"Expanding our hotel capacity is a strategic move to diversify and enhance Saint Lucia's tourism offerings beyond the existing hotels, resorts and independent accommodations products,” said Saint Lucia’s tourism minister Ernest Hilaire.

“While our luxury, adults-only resorts have firmly established Saint Lucia as a premier destination, we recognize the need to cater to a broader range of travelers. This expansion goes beyond the hotel sector [and] will include a mix of family-friendly and wellness-oriented accommodations, eco-lodges, boutique hotels, and independent intimate accommodations, offering options for every type of visitor and budget.”

Saint Lucia also plans to expand the cruise port facilities in Castries to allow for the landing of an additional two to three large cruise ships daily, disgorging approximately 10,000-12,000 passengers onto the streets of the Saint Lucian capital.

“This initiative is designed to change the aesthetic appeal of our city, boost the local economy by increasing visitor spending, creating jobs, and supporting local businesses, all while ensuring that we manage growth sustainably,” said Hilaire. “We are investing in significant upgrades to our road networks, enhancing utilities, and expanding public services to support the new hotel developments and increased visitor numbers.”

Hilaire said that balancing this significant growth with sustainability is central to Saint Lucia’s tourism strategy. “Our aim is to ensure that every visitor can enjoy the beauty of Saint Lucia without compromising the island's ecological integrity or the quality of life for our residents,” he said, pointing to the recent enactment of the island’s Tourism Development Act, which provides a framework for growth that is “resilient, inclusive, and sustainable,” Hilaire said.

Saint Lucia isn’t the only Caribbean destination seeking to control growth through policy. Turks & Caicos, which has seen visitor arrivals surge 227 percent since 2019, has embarked on a tourism carrying capacity study that tourism minister Josephine Connolly told reporters would be a first for the region.

“We refuse to compromise our natural beauty for growth,” Connolly said while detailing development plans that would bring major hotel projects to the smaller sister islands as well as busy Providenciales. The former include the luxury Salterra resort and spa slated to open in February 2025 in South Caicos (and aided by planned American Airlines flights that would be the island’s first direct international service “in many years,” said Connolly.

Elsewhere, Antigua and Barbuda, which enjoyed a more modest 6 percent year-over-year growth in arrivals between 2022 and 2023, and Anguilla, where first-quarter visitor arrivals rose 22.2 percent over 2023 and 24.4 percent compared to the same period in 2019, are vying to become the first Caribbean destinations to run entirely on renewable energy, officials said.

“We’re going to become the most sustainable destination in the region,” said Haydn Hughes, Anguilla’s minister of information and tourism. “We want to wean ourselves completely off fossil fuels.”

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