With travel to the Caribbean at 99% of pre pandemic levels the region is in a “pretty fantastic” place, the president of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association told delegates at last week’s 41st annual Caribbean Travel Marketplace in Barbados.

Nicola Madden-Greig admitted that – like much of the tourism world – the Caribbean still has issues, from labour shortages to supply chain disruptions and reduced interregional travel, not to mention climate crisis/environmental concerns.

But she added, “I don’t want the message to be that the Caribbean has not recovered. We are recovered. We are in growth mode. Some of us are sprinting ahead a bit more than others and we just want everyone to catch up… it’s an uneven recovery, but it’s a very good recovery.”

At -1% In the first quarter of 2023, compared to 2019, Madden-Greig noted that the Caribbean was the quickest region globally to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to WTTC 2022 statistics. (By comparison, the Americas is -22%, and Asia Pacific is -52%, for an overall 31% decline globally).

For its part, Canada is sending 13% fewer visitors to the Caribbean – a decline, Olivier Ponti of analytics firm ForwardKeys told Travel Industry Today, is attributable this country’s later return to travel (than the US) and lagging recovery of full air capacity. More than two million Canadians travelled to the Caribbean in 2022.

Most encouraging for the Caribbean, Madden-Greig said, is that the region’s robust recovery is in the face of inflation, including rising airfares (45%) and hotel rates, and lingering fears of recession by consumers.

And arrivals are further forecast to grow 20% over pre-pandemic numbers this spring and nearly 50% in summer, suggesting the arrival total for the year will top 2019’s 32 million visitors.

Boosting the region’s recovery is cruising, with the sector rapidly returning to pre pandemic numbers. In 2022, 19.2 million passengers represented 63% of the number in 2019; in 2023, 32 million are expected. Leading the way is the northern Caribbean at 92% of 2019 levels, though the southern Caribbean is only posting about 50% of 2019. Almost half of all cruise passengers are coming from North America.

Airline recovery is similarly in the cards for this year, according to data from ForwardKeys, with a 4% increase in seats to the region in Q2 and 10% expected for the summer. And that growth comes despite higher airfares (including on average 55% higher from Toronto in 2023 over the same. In 2019).

Looking ahead, much of the narrative of the CHTA – the first ever held in Barbados – focused on the Caribbean taking control of its own destiny economically and “shaping tourism on our own terms,” as Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said during the keynote address at the pre- CHTA conference Caribbean Travel Forum.

A key initiative would be for Caribbean nations to fashion a homegrown intra-regional tour operator to reduce dependence on foreign operators – though not at the expense of them, Mottley was quick to add.

That would likely prove instrumental in CHTA’s desire to develop a multi-destination tourism product within the islands, as well as encouraging intra-regional travel by its own citizens.

“We know the diversity, the food, the music, the culture, the people. We are a wonderful region, we need to celebrate it,” said Madden-Greig.

An obstacle to this vision, however, remains easy access to inter-island flights – a problem Caribbean Tourism Organization chair Kenneth Bryan said the organization is steadfastly working to solve.

interCaribbean Airways CEO Trevor Sadler, meanwhile, told reporters at the conference that the airline continues to grow and is poised to have 24 aircraft serving a 25-city route network, and that there is “more to come.” (Notably, the 33-year-old Turks and Caicos-based airline pays travel agent commissions).

At the same time, Jamaica’s tourism minister Edmund Bartlett called for the introduction of an environmental fund that would collect (voluntary) donations from travellers, with the money to be kept in-destination and used locally to help mitigate environmental and sustainable issues.

The global initiative, being championed by the Bartlett-founded Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre, is “more than an idea” Bartlett told Travel Industry Today and will be introduced at an upcoming G20 summit.

The Caribbean, Bartlett noted, is particularly vulnerable to environmental concerns, from weather events like hurricanes, coastal erosion and sargassum (seaweed) – all exacerbated by global warming – as well as human degradations.

“Tourism,” Bartlett said, “must lead the way in sustainability,” explaining that without a sustainable environment, tourism would “not exist.”

An example of a Caribbean country doing just that – and “turning hazard into opportunity” – is a new initiative to turn the burdensome sargassum into biofuel (by blending it with rum) and fertilizer, said Barbados Chief Fisheries Officer Dr. Shelly-Ann Cox.

Such opportunism also fuels the optimism of the CHTA.

“The good news is that we went through an absolute period of nothing and we’re all now recession-proof, pandemic-proof people,” said Madden-Greig. “We are the most resilient people in the world – and so anything that is coming down the pipe, we can deal with it!”