T&T was among the top five best per­form­ing cruise des­ti­na­tions last year, ac­cord­ing to da­ta re­leased by the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) in its lat­est state of the in­dus­try re­port.The coun­try was among des­ti­na­tions to achieve dou­ble dig­it in­creas­es in cruise pas­sen­ger ar­rivals, con­tribut­ing to the eight per cent in­crease for the re­gion com­pared to 2013.Ac­cord­ing to the CTO, the es­ti­mat­ed to­tal num­ber of cruise pas­sen­ger ar­rivals in the re­gion was 23.9 mil­lion.

The month­ly per­for­mances last year were bet­ter than the cor­re­spond­ing per­for­mances in 2013 with the ex­cep­tion of De­cem­ber which con­tract­ed.

Of the 24 des­ti­na­tions re­port­ing da­ta, 21 achieved in­creas­es, 14 of which achieved dou­ble-dig­it in­creas­es. St Vin­cent & the Grenadines (91.1 per cent), Mar­tinique (71.3 per cent), Be­lize (42.9 per cent), T&T (30.1 per cent) and Turks & Caicos (24.8 per cent) were top five per­form­ing des­ti­na­tions. By mar­ket share, The Ba­hamas, Cozumel, US Vir­gin Is­lands, Cay­man Is­lands and St Maarten are the top five des­ti­na­tions.

With the ex­pan­sion in cruise busi­ness to Be­lize, Cay­man Is­lands, Cozumel, Ja­maica and Turks & Caicos Is­lands, the West­ern Caribbean is now the largest sub-re­gion for cruise pas­sen­ger ar­rivals hav­ing dis­placed the East­ern Caribbean from this po­si­tion."The is­lands of the South­ern Caribbean did re­gain some of the ca­pac­i­ty which it had lost dur­ing the pe­ri­od of high cost fu­el," the CTO re­port­ed.

Re­flect­ing the resurg­ing de­mand for leisure trav­el, ar­rivals to the Caribbean grew by 5.4 per cent out­pac­ing the av­er­age glob­al growth rateThe CTO said the out­look for tourist ar­rivals to the Caribbean is cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic–a fur­ther 4 to 5 per cent in­crease in ar­rivals is ex­pect­ed.The down­side risks of a po­ten­tial Ebo­la out­break iand the cur­rent Chikun­gun­ya out­break have dis­si­pat­ed some­what, due to sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in the rate of in­fec­tions in the last quar­ter of 2014.

"As it re­lates to cruise pas­sen­ger ar­rival num­bers, the out­look is less op­ti­mistic. While the Caribbean will re­main the num­ber one cruise des­ti­na­tion world­wide, it is ex­pect­ed to see a small de­cline in ca­pac­i­ty as ships are again be­ing repo­si­tioned away from the re­gion, ac­cord­ing to 2015-2016 Cruise In­dus­try News An­nu­al Re­port," the CTO said."For this rea­son, no sig­nif­i­cant growth in cruise pas­sen­ger ar­rivals is ex­pect­ed this year."

Last year, a record 26.3 mil­lion tourists vis­it­ed the Caribbean.This was 1.3 mil­lion more than in 2013, it­self a record year for the re­gion. These vis­i­tors con­tributed a record US$29.2 bil­lion to Caribbean economies, a 3.9 per cent rise over the US$28 bil­lion vis­i­tors spent in 2013.