WILLEMSTAD – October 17, 2022 – The Curaçao Tourist Board (CTB) is reporting 355,661 stayover visitor arrivals in the first nine months of the year 2022, which represents a 103% recovery rate compared to the same period in 2019. The stayover arrivals registered in 2019 during the same period was 346,464. With this information CTB proudly announce that pre-pandemic stayover arrivals have been fully recovered. It is with great pleasure that we will reach the overall arrivals realized in the year 2019 by end of this year and even welcome a record-breaking number of stayover arrivals if the circumstances remain as is.
September 2022 performance:
CTB reports 37,229 stayover visitor arrivals for the month of September. With these arrivals, September 2022 recovered 115% of the pre-pandemic arrivals recorded in September 2019, when we welcomed 32,510 stayover visitors. Curaçao is seeing a great performance from its top three main markets; The Netherlands, United States of America and Colombia. The three countries are accountable for 71% of all stayover visitors who traveled to Curaçao in September 2022. Altogether 64.2% of all the visitors who travelled to Curaçao chose a resort hotel as their type of accommodation, only 38.8% stayed in alternative accommodations. CTB registered an average stay of 9.5 nights in September.
Europe remains the strongest region for Curaçao and in September a total of 19,087 European visitors travelled to Curaçao. This is 51.3% of the total stayover arrivals. A total of 15,964 visitors from the Netherlands were welcomed last month. This is a 114% recovery rate compared to the number of stayover arrivals welcomed in September 2019 (14,004 Dutch visitors). Other secondary markets within the European region also performed well. We welcomed out of Germany and Belgium 1,076 and 766 visitors, respectively.
Out of the North American region, a total of 8,324 visitors are registered, contributing to a 22.4% share of the total arrivals. From the USA, we welcomed 8,010 visitors in September. The number of stayover visitors out of the USA is exceptional. In previous years the number of stayover arrivals in September out of the USA never surpassed 5,000 visitors. When comparing the same month in 2019, CTB registered 3,500 US visitors, recording a 229% recovery. CTB is seeing great demand out of the US market. It is the fourth consecutive month that the Curaçao Tourist Board is seeing record breaking stayover arrivals from the US market. Curaçao now offers a greater pool of US branded resort hotels, which is reaping its benefit especially for the US market.
From the South American region, we welcomed 6,030 visitors. Two thousand two hundred sixty-three (2,263) are visitors from Colombia. The recovery rate of the Colombian market is almost 100%. In 2019 we recorded 2,274 visitors in September. A total of 1,025 stayover visitors from Brazil are registered in September 2022.
Out of the Caribbean region, we have welcomed 2,812 stayover visitors in September, primarily from the Dutch Kingdom islands.
There were 11 cruise ship calls and 29,033 cruise visitors for the month of September.
