WILLEMSTAD – May 12, 2022 – The Curaçao Tourist Board (CTB) is reporting 42,715 stayover visitor arrivals for the month of April. With these arrivals, April 2022 achieved 106% of the pre pandemic arrivals of April 2019, when we welcomed 40,289 stayover visitors. April becomes the second month to surpass the number of stayover arrivals, when comparing to the same month. October 2021 was the first month to record better performance than pre-pandemic times.
From these 42,715 arrivals, 61% traveled from Europe, 17% from North America, 13% from South America, 6% from the Caribbean region and 2 % from the rest of the world. In overall, we welcomed an average of 1,423 stayover visitors per day who spent a total of 393,329 visitor nights in Curaçao.
We welcomed 21,379 Dutch visitors in April, which is 32% more than April 2019 (pre-pandemic). Out of Belgium and Germany, we registered 1,430 and 1,298 visitors respectively. Arrivals out of Belgium also slightly surpassed the pre-pandemic arrivals of April 2019, when we registered 1,383 Belgium visitors. Fifty-eight percent of the European visitors who visited Curaçao in April stayed in resort hotels.
Visitor arrivals out of the United States of America also surpassed the arrivals of April 2019. From the United States of America, we welcomed 6,611 visitors in April 2022, while in 2019 we welcomed 6,213; which is 6% more. Seven hundred seventy-four visitors were welcomed out of Canada. In total we welcomed 7,385 visitors from North America. North American visitors stayed 71% in resort hotels.
We welcomed 5,735 from the South American region. Of the South America arrivals, 2,782 (49%), 816 (14%) and 672 (12%) traveled from Colombia, Brazil and Suriname, respectively. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of all South American visitors stayed in resort hotels. From the Caribbean region, we have welcomed 2,543 stayover visitors in April, primarily from the Dutch Kingdom islands.
There were 21 cruise ship calls and 27,886 cruise visitors for the month of April.
Year to Date arrivals: January through April 2022
In total 154 thousand visitors are registered from January through April 2022. Out of Europe, we welcomed 102 thousand tourists in Curaçao. From North and South America, we welcomed 26 and 16 thousand visitors respectively. Our neighboring islands from the Caribbean provided 6 thousand visitors during this period. Curaçao is currently welcoming at least 5.5 times more visitors compared to last year. Last year we welcomed 27.5 thousand visitors during the same period.
Our progress to recoup our pre-pandemic production continues in the right direction. We have recovered 92% of the tourist arrivals in the first four months of the year. In the first four months of 2019 we have registered 167 thousand visitors.
