Caribbean tourism enjoys return of visitors

After the fall in tourism due to the pandemic, the Caribbean began to register records of tourist arrivals last year, with historical numbers of visitors on beaches in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Colombia has nearly fully recovered, while Cuba is making advances despite still lagging behind the region. Jamaica is also experiencing this growth situation this year.

In 2022, the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico, a country that concentrates almost half of Latin America’s international tourism, registered a record of more than 30 million arrivals at Cancun airport, according to the state government.

For its part, the Ministry of Tourism of the Dominican Republic reported that it registered 7.1 million tourists by air and 1.3 million by cruise, which exceeded the pre-pandemic level and reached record figures in 2022. As a result, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) recognized the country for its “exemplary” tourism recovery.

Puerto Rico’s tourism sector also set records in 2022 for jobs in the industry (more than 91,000), income from accommodation (1.6 billion dollars), and passengers at its international airport (more than 10 million).

And finally, Migración de Colombia highlighted that tourism practically recovered completely after the pandemic, with more than 3.5 million international travelers between January and October 2022, a growth of 145.2% compared to the same period the previous year.

The surge of tourists to the Caribbean also reaches Jamaica. The number of foreign visitors coming to Jamaica in the first quarter of the year was 1.18 million — about 94 percent more than the same period in 2022. It caused long queues and hours of waiting time for arriving air passengers at Jamaica’s key airport.

The country’s authority aims to attract at least 5 million visitors per year to the island by 2025. It would be a 35 percent leap from Jamaica’s record of 3.7 million tourists in 2022.