by Brian Major
Last updated: 4:44 PM ET, Wed April 13, 2022
Saint Lucia hosted 32,110 overnight, land-based visitors in March, the Caribbean destination's highest monthly arrivals total since the destination's July 2020 reopening following the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The March arrivals represent a 21 percent increase over the Saint Lucia Tourism Authority (SLTA)'s forecasted figure, said organization officials. Between January and March of this year, Saint Lucia has hosted 80,811 air arrivals. U.S. travelers represent 56.2 percent of the country's total stay-over arrivals - the largest share, with 45,400 visitors.
In a statement, SLTA officials called the increased arrivals evidence of "a strong start to the year [which] echoes the latest report from the United Nations World Tourism Organization which confirmed the Caribbean as leading the world in the recovery of stopover arrivals."
"The region's recovery rate sits at 61.5 percent comparing 2022 to 2019," SLTA added. "This is almost double the total global rate of 32.9 percent. Saint Lucia is "the only country in the Eastern Caribbean in the top five" of highest-performing global nations in 2022, said SLTA officials.
SLTA officials identified the U.K. as Saint Lucia's second-largest visitor source market with 30.3 percent of total overnight arrivals at nearly 24,500, guests, which officials noted is the highest share recorded for this market, even prior to the pandemic.
Saint Lucia's Canadian source market "continues to show steady growth" compared with the same period in 2020 and 2021, officials said. The first quarter of 2022 reflects six percent of total Saint Lucia visitor arrivals following the Covid-19 pandemic. Visitors from the Caribbean and the rest of the world represented seven percent of first-quarter 2022 arrivals, said officials.
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