Tourism sector records best year to date

Stay-over arrivals as reported by the Saint Lucia Tourist Board for 2010, indicate that this year was a record one, achieving the highest number of arrivals in the island’s history, despite several threats that impacted the industry including the passage of Hurricane Tomas in the fourth quarter, the Icelandic ash cloud in April and bad weather in major source markets in December.
The successes recorded in the first nine months of the year, heavily contributed to the overall total stay-over arrivals of 305,937; an increase of 10 percent from 2009 and 1 percent from 2006 – the second best year to date.
The US remained the largest source market, accounting for 42 percentof arrivals, while the UK market captured the second largest share at 22 percent, followed by the Caribbean market at 18 percent and Canada at 10 percent.
Tourism Director Louis Lewis noted that last year’s successes were attributed in part, “to the strategic approach to marketing and promoting the destination,” and noted that “the SLTB stood ready to build on these targeted marketing strategies throughout the 2011 calendar year, in order to achieve even greater results.”
Year to date cruise passenger arrivals totaled 670,043, a 4.2 percent decrease from 2009.  Total visitor arrivals by yacht at the Rodney Bay Marina for 2010, was 32,052
(a 0.2 percent decrease from the same period in 2009), while the figure recorded for the year at Marigot Bay was 10,259, bringing total arrivals by yacht for the year to 42,311.