Count Curaçao among the Caribbean destinations reporting strong visitor arrival numbers in the post-outbreak leisure travel environment. The southern Caribbean country hosted 275,799 overnight, land-based visitors in the first seven months of 2022, Curaçao Tourist Board (CTB) officials said Thursday.
The figure exceeds the 265,000 visitors the country welcomed in all of 2021.
Additionally, Curaçao's 2022 summer arrivals exceed pre-pandemic totals. "Overall, we welcomed 48,246 [overnight] arrivals in July," said agency officials, "exceeding the 37,249 visitors recorded in pre-pandemic 2019 by more than 11,000 visitors. It is the first time CTB is recording 48,000 visitors in the summer month."
Curaçao's strong summer 2022 visitor arrivals were driven in part by a significant U.S. presence. The country hosted 10,207 U.S. visitors in July, surpassing the 6,395 American visitors recorded in pre-pandemic July 2019 by nearly 4,000 visitors.
"This is another record-breaking number of U.S. visitors registered in one single month," said CTB officials. "This year's performance is a 60 percent increase compared to July 2019," they added, while 78 percent of U.S. visitors stayed in "resort hotels," said CTB.
The Sandals Royal Curaçao resort opened this summer on the island and several other branded hotel properties in the destination have been launched or significantly renovated in the past two years.
"Curaçao now offers a greater pool of U.S.-branded resort hotels, which is reaping its benefit, especially for the U.S. market," said CTB officials. "The collective effort from our local stakeholders combined with our international partners in our main markets is showing a favorable result."
Overall, visitors spent 501,382 visitor nights in Curaçao in July, an average of 10.3 nights per visitor. In addition to the land-based overnight stays, CTB reported 10 cruise ship calls carrying 29,564 visitors during July.
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