by Brian Major
Last updated: 8:15 AM ET, Thu June 6, 2024
First-quarter 2024 international passenger arrivals at St.
Maarten’s Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) surged to 93 percent of
2019 levels, officials at PJIAE, the airport’s operating company, said in local
press reports this week.
The 2024 totals continue a two-year trend of increased
arrivals at PIJA, which hosted 1.4 million passenger arrivals in 2023, a figure
officials said represents 99.5 percent of pre-pandemic 2019 totals.
The increased arrivals place St. Maarten among several Caribbean nations reporting tourism
numbers that equal or exceed the totals recorded before the pandemic.
Dual-island St. Maarten’s 2024 overseas tourist arrivals
are up 19 percent over 2023, according to travel research firm ForwardKeys.
“Passenger traffic has rebounded remarkably, and we are
nearly back to pre-pandemic levels,” said Brian Mingo, PJIAE’s CEO, in a St.
Maarten Daily Herald report. North Americans represent the airport’s primary passenger
source, accounting for 58 percent of all travelers, according to the report.
Mingo said PIJA’s long-running renovation, which officials
said was delayed by the pandemic, is nearly complete. The renovated facility,
scheduled for completion in October, will feature new arrivals, check-in and
departure halls.
St. Maarten’ 2024 air arrivals increase places the
Caribbean nation fourth among other regional destinations in terms of first-half
tourism growth, exceeded only by Belize (30 percent), Curacao (24 percent) and Aruba
(20 percent), according to the ForwardKeys study.
Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, the U.S.
Virgin Islands, Barbados and the Turks and Caicos Islands all posted double-digit
arrivals growth of between 12 and 19 percent during the first half of this year.
Overall, the region’s international arrivals surpassed pre-pandemic
2019 levels by 13 percent in the first half of 2024, according to ForwardKeys officials.
In a statement, ForwardKeys attributed the growth to “increased connectivity and
demand from key source markets.”
“The recovery is continuing,” said May Ling-Chun, St.
Maarten’s director of tourism, in a June 5 interview with TravelPulse. Chun
said the improved air arrivals came as the country worked through PIJA’s long-delayed
renovation.
“We’ve already surpassed 2019,” Chun said. “Even though we’re
still in recovery at the airport, we’re still getting these numbers.”
Chun said the increased air arrivals are reflected in higher
hotel and resort occupancy. “For stayover [visitors], if we look at the first
quarter of 2024, we had over 130,000 guests, a seven percent increase over 2023,”
she said.
Chun added that North American travelers are driving the
increases as “the cornerstone of St. Maarten tourism, representing 53.2 percent
of overnight visitors.
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