SVG records over 100,000 stay-over visitors for the first time ever 

By Admin. Updated 9:42 p.m., Wednesday, January 15, 2025, Atlantic Standard Time (GMT-4). 

Minister of Tourism, Civil Aviation, Sustainable Development, and Culture – Carlos James announced in Parliament today that the country has, for the first time, recorded over 100,000 stay-over visitors. 

As of December 2024, the provisional figures indicate that we recorded over 101,471 stay-over visitors to the destination, Mr. James said while contributing to the debate of the 2025 Appropriations Bill referred to as the Budget. 

He said the figure for 2024 represents a 25.6 percent increase year-on-year, “and a 39 percent increase over our best year 2019, which is pre-Covid”. 

“It is the most-ever stay-over visitors we have recorded in the country,” he said, adding that the development comes amid affected room stock in the Southern Grenadines due to Hurricane Beryl. 

The tourism minister also confirmed that the country’s tourism sector has recovered from post-pandemic periods and from natural hazards, and his ministry and the SVG Tourism Authority are positioning St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) as a globally competitive tourism destination. 

The country’s tourism successes also come as it has been awarded the title of “Best Nature Destination” at the 2024 World Tourism Awards and after Sandals St. Vincent led the charge of Sandals Resorts being adjudged the US Today’s Best All-Inclusive Caribbean Resorts of 2025.

The country has also seen increased airlift from its main tourism source markets including North America and the UK, as major resorts and hotels such as Sandals and Holiday Inn Express and Suites opened here in 2024, and local hoteliers have expanded their room stock. 

Mr. James also spoke to the successes of SVG’s emerging tourism market growth in relation to neighboring countries that have matured Ans more developed tourism products. 

“There is often this comparison made with other OECS countries: look at where they are; look at their numbers, and they have hotels… The reality is, they built international airports decades upon decades ago. They had gone into tourism with major hotel chains many years ago and are more established and mature tourism destinations than St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” he said. 

Mr. James said the growth rate of the tourism industry averaged roughly over 30 percent over the last decade, surpassing the long-term range of about 7-9 percent, annually. 

“What that is showing, Madam Speaker, compared to our destination peers in the region, this country has exhibited the largest average growth in total and stay-over arrivals,” Mr. James said. 

This means, Madam Speaker, that the performance is better than the mature markets in the Eastern Caribbean and even Barbados and those similar to St. Vincent and the Grenadines that are in their growth phase. So, while the more mature markets has all the investments and attract larger movement of people in terms of stay-pver arrivals, our growth in the margins within which we are operating with our room stock of limited capacity, seats that are available to the destination, the rapidity of our growth at this stage is surpassing the regional average. 

The minister said given the relatively early stages of our country’s tourism development, such a high growth is expected to continue in the medium to long term.