St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) is seeing an increase in yachting arrivals coming out of COVID.
Minister of Tourism Carlos James said on Monday that in the month of January 2023, the numbers were up 84% from the previous year.
“The numbers are moving, from over 4,000 to 7,000 calls within the month of January 2023. It is showing that we’re just at the peak of moving out of our COVID downturn in terms of our numbers where tourism is concerned and yachting is leading the charge”.
“We’re still not yet out of the woods, because when you look at the comparative numbers for 2019, we’re just below those numbers by 11%, which shows that there’s also room for improvement.” This will only get better as we go into a post-COVID period in terms of yachting and marine tourism”.
In terms of where most of the yachts are anchored and in terms of clearance, James said Bequia was leading in that regard.
“Bequia led the way with the numbers, and we had over 4000 yachts cleared in Bequia and just under 2000 on Union Island in terms of yacht arrivals and clearance”.
“As I indicated, we are seeing a spike of 96% to 96.7% in our rivals in terms of yachting as well. We’re moving from the Q4 of 2021, with just over 5000, 5755 arrivals, to the Q4 of 2022, with just over 11,000, 11,321 yacths coming into the jurisdiction, which showed that our numbers have held during COVID”, James stated.
