…5% increase in overall stayover arrivals…
WILLEMSTAD – September 26, 2019
August Visitor Arrivals 2019
The Curaçao Tourist Board (CTB) is reporting a 5% growth in stayover visitor arrivals for August 2019. Precisely, in total 1,834 more visitors were registered in August 2019, bringing the total count to 38,928. The year to date for stayover arrivals is now 313,930, which is 13% increase over previous year.
Our leading producing region Europe grew 11% for the month. Arrivals form the Caribbean region jumped 42% for the month of August. North America recorded a decline of 8%, while South America declined by 15% primarily because the Venezuelan border is closed and it was open at this time last year. Despite the decline in North and South America, the diversity of our tourism source markets still resulted in positive growth for the month of August. The significant increase from the Caribbean was directly related to the North Sea Jazz Festival and of course, twice-weekly service from Port of Spain with Caribbean Airlines. Trinidad & Tobago had a 237% increase in visitor arrivals in the month of August.
The overall visitor nights grew by 1% in August 2019. In total 326 thousand visitor nights are registered. Out of Europe, tourists spent 210 thousand nights in Curaçao, a 6% increase in visitor nights. North and South American visitors spent respectively 44 and 43 thousand visitor nights in August. Visitors from the Caribbean region spent 26 thousand nights in Curaçao.
Hotel performance CHATA
Preliminary August 2019 figures show that Curaçao had a hotel occupancy of 75.7%. Compared to the prior year (72.7%), it is an increase of 3 percentage points. The average daily rate (ADR) increased with 0.4% compared to 2018, from $150.46 to $151.01 in 2019. As for the revenue per available room (RevPAR), numbers indicate an increase as well of 4.5%. The revenue per available room in August 2018 was $109.36 and in 2019, it increased to $114.30.
Cruise Arrivals CPA
We welcomed 13 cruise calls in August 2019, which is 2 less cruise calls than August 2018, resulting in a decrease in cruise visitors. There were 34,531 versus 41,542 cruise visitors previous year, which is a 17% decline.
Year to date: January through August 2019
January through August the stayover arrivals grew by 13%, which in absolute numbers is 313 thousand stayover visitors.
January through August the cruise arrivals grew by 4%, which in absolute numbers is 503 thousand cruise visitors.
January through August the overall arrivals grew by 7%, which in absolute numbers is 829 thousand visitors.
