Visitor arrivals up by almost 50% for 2018

Visitor arrivals to St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) have increased in most areas in the first seven months of this year.

This is according to statistics read out by Glen Beache, the chief executive officer of St Vincent and the Grenadines Tourism Authority (SVGTA), during a press conference on Wednesday.

“Overall, so far for the year we are at a 48.6 per cent increase for visitor arrivals into St Vincent and the Grenadines,” the CEO said.

Beache said that there was an 11.2 per cent increase in stayovers for July 2018, when compared to July 2017.

And from January to July this year, there was a 7.1 per cent increase when compared to the same period last year.

As it relates to visitors coming to this country via yachting, there was a 12 per cent increase in July, and a 21.2 per cent increase from January to July.

The CEO indicated that numbers were also up for visitors coming to St Vincent and the Grenadines via cruise ships.

“For the cruise ships, we had a 75.9 per cent increase and for July and from January to July, we have 84.2 per cent increase,” he said.

Beache said that the only decrease observed was related to same-day visitors, which have shown a similar pattern in previous years.

“Same day visitors, which is something that continues to lag behind, for July, we had an 87.6 per cent decrease. Negative growth in that. Overall from January to July for same day, we have a 15.3 per cent decrease,” he said.

However, the CEO highlighted that visitors from Canada, the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom have increased.

In July, he said that there was a 26.1 per cent increase of visitors from Canada, when compared to the numbers for that same period last year.

And there was an 15.3 per cent increase from January to July.

For the USA, there was an 8.2 per cent increase in July and 13.1 per cent increase from January to July.

There was also a 50.1 per cent increase of visitors from the United Kingdom in July and a 9.2 per cent increase from January to July.

“So, so far, so good, this year. I hope that we continue to grow,” Beache said. “We’re very happy with what we see going on. There’s always more room for improvement constantly and we hope to do that. We have a new cruise ship season coming in. We have the preliminary list for that. We are looking to be even bigger than last year, which is a good thing we’ve seen and we just put our best foot forward and do the best we can.”