1st months of 2004 set new tourism records

If you thought that last year’s fantastic figures for tourism were a fluke, a con, or the product of an overactive imagination you’d better look again. That’s right: the upward trend continues. According to statistics released today by the Belize Tourism Board, both overnight and cruise arrivals have increased dramatically during the first two months of 2004. Arrivals at the Philip Goldson International Airport, the country’s main port of entry, increased nine percent in January and a whopping seventeen percent in February compared to the same period in 2003. This makes fifteen consecutive months of increased airport arrivals, fourteen of which were new monthly records. The figures for cruise ship arrivals, while of much lesser economic impact than overnight stays, were up an impressive sixty-seven and eighty-two percent respectively for January and February. In what may be a rare instance of official understatement, Director of Tourism Tracy Taegar commented, “Belize is becoming an increasingly popular vacation destination.”