Tourism in the Caribbean is large­ly trend­ing in the right di­rec­tion, but there is still lim­it­ed da­ta to show if T&T’s tourism is en­joy­ing a sim­i­lar boost.

Ear­li­er this month, multi­na­tion­al pay­ment card ser­vices com­pa­ny Mas­ter­card re­leased a “Trav­el Trends 2024” re­port which not­ed that glob­al­ly the trav­el sec­tor had seen “soar­ing pas­sen­ger traf­fic and longer stays in 2024.”

The re­port went fur­ther to ex­plain that typ­i­cal­ly tourists ap­peared to spend more on va­ca­tion than be­fore, de­spite favour­ing cheap­er ho­tels or stays, based on sta­tis­tics gath­ered.

The re­port said, “Across the Caribbean, it is be­com­ing ev­i­dent that while the trav­el re­cov­ery is ad­vanc­ing, coun­tries with rel­a­tive­ly more af­ford­able ho­tel op­tions are per­form­ing ex­cep­tion­al­ly well, ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit­ing the economies. At an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, there’s been a no­table in­crease in the time spent on va­ca­tion, climb­ing from 4.5 days in 2020 to 5.5 days in 2024. In the Caribbean, for in­stance, time spent in Bar­ba­dos rose from an av­er­age of 7.8 to 8.5 days re­spec­tive­ly. The in­crease is due to key fac­tors, in­clud­ing af­ford­abil­i­ty and cli­mate.”

How­ev­er, while Mas­ter­card’s da­ta is promis­ing for the Caribbean, T&T does not fea­ture in the re­port in any sig­nif­i­cant way.

Sun­day Busi­ness reached out to Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell con­cern­ing the re­port and he ex­plained it was un­clear to the Min­istry if T&T had seen any in­crease in trav­el spend­ing as the min­istry’s in­for­ma­tion was large­ly lim­it­ed to ex­it sur­veys done by tourists.

Mitchell said he reached out to Mas­ter­card to see if such da­ta could be pre­sent­ed to the Min­istry, but by Mon­day he ex­plained the da­ta was not made avail­able to him.

He said, how­ev­er, such in­for­ma­tion would be valu­able to the lo­cal tourism sec­tor as a cred­it card com­pa­ny would have greater in­sight in­to spend­ing habits and oth­er be­hav­iours that could great­ly in­form the tourism in­dus­try.

Shinelle Smith, tourism ed­u­ca­tor and chair of ed­u­ca­tion at COSTAATT, agreed as she ex­plained that T&T’s ap­proach to da­ta col­lec­tion needs to change so that bet­ter strate­gies could be de­vel­oped with­in the in­dus­try. She stressed how­ev­er this was not sole­ly up to the Min­istry of Tourism.

“One oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion is the need for a cul­ture change con­cern­ing da­ta col­lec­tion. While tourism sta­tis­tics may be read­i­ly ob­tained per­ti­nent to ar­rivals, we need to train and ad­vo­cate for small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es and stake­hold­ers with­in the in­dus­try to un­der­stand the val­ue of da­ta,” Smith said.

She said qual­i­ta­tive re­views can im­prove prod­uct de­vel­op­ment, and cus­tomer ser­vice and pave the way for re­peat vis­i­tors at every lev­el with­in the sec­tor.

“There­fore, hav­ing an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of man­ag­ing the var­i­ous touch points of each vis­i­tor in­ter­ac­tion can fur­ther so­lid­i­fy the brand­ing of T&T as a tourism-ori­ent­ed des­ti­na­tion,” said the tourism ed­u­ca­tor.

These strate­gies, she ex­plained had been in­tro­duced with telling ef­fect in oth­er coun­tries.

“Sev­er­al des­ti­na­tions have adopt­ed sus­tain­able frame­works to over­see their tourism de­vel­op­ment and most of the strate­gic ap­proach­es have re­lied on tar­get­ed da­ta which in­form de­ci­sions in mean­ing­ful ways. In this re­gard, it is equal­ly im­por­tant to es­tab­lish mech­a­nisms for col­lect­ing in­for­ma­tion about vis­i­tors rather than as­sess­ing ar­rivals as a ho­moge­nous group,” said Smith.

There was, how­ev­er, one trend in the Mas­ter­card re­port that was quan­ti­fied with re­spect to T&T: Cruise ship trav­el is up.

The re­port not­ed, “Cruise trav­el is sur­pass­ing pre-pan­dem­ic de­mand lev­els, dri­ven by af­ford­abil­i­ty com­pared to ho­tels. The Ba­hamas has wel­comed an ad­di­tion­al 2.9 mil­lion pas­sen­gers ar­riv­ing by sea com­pared to 2019.”

In T&T, both is­lands saw in­creased cruise vis­i­tors this year com­pared to last year.

Ac­cord­ing to the cruise da­ta sheet pre­sent­ed by the Min­istry in April, T&T wel­comed 177,579 cruise pas­sen­gers for the 2023/2024 cruise ship sea­son which rep­re­sent­ed a 46 per cent in­crease over the num­ber of vis­i­tors for 2023 which stood at 95,107 vis­i­tors.

T&T wel­comed 30 more cruise ships (98) than it did in the pri­or sea­son (68). 

Michelle Mey­er, chief econ­o­mist, and head of the Mas­ter­card Eco­nom­ics In­sti­tute, not­ed in the Mas­ter­card re­port that the tourism in­dus­try’s re­bound was large­ly tied to in­creased em­pha­sis on au­then­tic ex­pe­ri­ences.

She said “To­day’s trav­ellers are dis­cern­ing, choos­ing des­ti­na­tions that of­fer both val­ue and au­then­tic­i­ty. They are savvy enough to stretch their funds and ex­tend their stays, im­mers­ing them­selves ful­ly in the won­ders of each lo­cale.”

Trav­el re­cov­ery in the Caribbean has been not­ed by sev­er­al promi­nent Caribbean busi­ness­es, with Guardian Hold­ings Ltd, the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion and Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd all not­ing the sec­tor’s had boost­ed fi­nan­cial per­for­mances in the past year.

Ear­ly in May, Ja­maica’s Tourism Min­is­ter Ed­mund Bartlett an­nounced in that coun­try’s Par­lia­ment that the coun­try is ex­pect­ed to reg­is­ter a record US$4.38 bil­lion for the fis­cal year 2023-24 from the tourism in­dus­try.

Ac­cord­ing to the Mas­ter­card re­port sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries are ex­pect­ed to en­joy ma­jor surges in tourism for the sum­mer months.

The re­port said, “Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the top 10 trend­ing des­ti­na­tions for June through Au­gust 2024 for Amer­i­can trav­ellers in­clude four touris­tic des­ti­na­tions in the re­gion: Oran­jes­tad, Aru­ba (2nd), Pun­ta Cana, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic (5th), San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co (6th), and San­ti­a­go, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic (10th).”

The re­port not­ed that based on the da­ta, an all-time high of 15.9 mil­lion Amer­i­cans trav­elled in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in the first quar­ter of 2024.

The re­port al­so de­tailed an ‘ex­pe­ri­ence econ­o­my on the go’ which saw con­sumers pri­ori­tis­ing ex­pe­ri­ences over ma­te­r­i­al goods while trav­el­ling.

This, the re­port stat­ed, rep­re­sent­ed 12 per cent of tourism sales which is the high­est point not­ed in at least five years.