Growth slow but overnight tourism arrivals show solid increase

While the distribution of the proceeds from the Head Tax on cruise passengers is the subject of a boiling political controversy, the locomotive for Belize’s tourism train continues to remain traditional overnight vacationers. And the latest statistics from the Belize Tourism Board show that while current growth rates do not match those of the last decade, 2006 showed a respectable increase in visitor arrivals. Provisional figures for the first eleven months of the year indicate that 2006 saw a two point nine percent rise in visitors arriving at the Philip Goldson International Airport, the nation’s primary port of entry for tourists. The biggest jumps in traffic were experienced in April and May while October saw the most serious monthly decline. Looking at tourist arrivals through all points of entry, that is the airport plus Benque Viejo, Santa Elena, Dangriga and Punta Gorda, the numbers look even better with a four point three percent increase through November. When the December statistics are in the total number of tourists for the year should be closing in on the two hundred fifty thousand mark. As for cruise passenger arrivals, the wind has certainly left the sails of that segment of the tourism industry. From a peak of over eight hundred fifty thousand cruise arrivals in 2004, the numbers have dropped to less than six hundred fifty-six thousand in 2006. The opening of the southside cruise port, as early as a year from now, could resuscitate those figures in a few years, but for now the future of the cruise industry in general and for Belize in particular, remains uncertain and subject to factors over which we have little control.