A tourism boom 

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Tourism to Trinidad and Tobago is surging.

The country reported 222,946 stay over tourist arrivals in the first six months of 2015, up 9.3 percent compared to the same period in 2014.

That was one of the highest rates of tourism growth in the Caribbean in the first part of 2015, surpassed only by Aruba, Cuba and Haiti.

The growth was driven in large party by the new direct flights launched last year to Trinidad by JetBlue Airways out of both Fort Lauderdale and New York City.

That was borne out in the numbers; the country reported a 23.3 percent improvement in US visitors in the first half of 2015, with a total of 94,622 visitors from the US.

While the data was not broken apart between Trinidad and Tobago, it’s likely Trinidad has seen the brunt of the boom; recent data from the Tobago House of Assembly reported that international arrivals to Tobago were largely flat in the winter season compared to last year; with 17,991 stay over arrivals in the 2015 winter season and 17,883 stay over arrivals in the winter season in 2014.

Conversely, the country saw a 14.2 percent drop in tourist arrivals out of Europe, traditionally one of Tobago’s strongest source markets.