The Caribbean tourism industry, for the first time in history, outpaced the tourism data growth of the rest of the world.

This was revealed in the tourism growth data for 2015 at the State of the Tourism Industry Report held at the CTO headquarters in Barbados.

Saint Lucia saw a significant 5.2 percent growth in winter tourist arrivals and a 0.2 percent growth in summer arrivals. The growth in arrivals pushed total stopovers for Saint Lucia to 344,908 visitors for 2015, an increase of 2 percent over the previous year. The most significant growths were seen in Cuba and Haiti; the former experiencing a whopping 17.4 percent increase while the latter saw a healthy 10.9 percent increase in arrivals.

Figures to note include a 7 percent increase in international trips to the Caribbean (28.7 million arrivals) in 2015, which is supported by sustained economic recovery in our main markets, a strong US dollar and a collapse in oil prices. There were over 14.3 million US visits to the region, 6.3 percent more than the previous year. (Notably, the American market accounts for approximately 50 percent of total arrivals and the majority of Americans to the region visited the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.)

Arrivals from the European market were estimated at 5.2 million, breaching the 5 million mark for the first time since 2008. This represented growth of 4.2 percent. The top performers were Turks and Caicos Islands (34.7 percent), Cuba (23.1 percent) and Montserrat (12.1 percent).

Lower oil prices, a strong US dollar, improved economic growth in our major source markets and extra airline seat capacity to the region are all expected to positively impact tourism performance in the Caribbean. However, uncertainty about the impact of the mosquito-borne disease Zika; the implications of the economic slowdown of China, the world’s largest economy; and the continuation of recessions in Brazil and Venezuela will temper optimism.

Consequently, the CTO predicts that stay over arrivals to the Caribbean will increase between 4.5 and 5.5 percent, while cruise arrivals will increase between one and two percent.