PURE GRENADA OFF TO GREAT START FOR 2018

US MARKET SHARE AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH FOR THE CARIBBEAN DESTINATION

Grenada Tourism Authority CEO Patricia Maher and Maurice Bishop International Airport Marketing Manager Lenworth Gordon at Routes America 2018. Click on image

With the final numbers tallied, destination Pure Grenada recorded total arrivals of 100,654 for January 2018, an increase of more than 30% over January 2017 (75,600).  In addition, all visitor categories reflected an increase including Stay over (13, 815) up by 13%, Cruise (82,797) up by 37% and Yachting (4,042) up by 43%.

CEO of the Grenada Tourism Authority, Patricia Maher says that the GTA is delighted with the performance and everyone on the ground is enjoying the results of the hard work by all the Tourism stakeholders. She says that the excitement with the opening of Silversands Grenada later this year is palpable, since it is the first hotel development on Grand Anse Beach in over 25 years. Work is also progressing on the Kimpton, Kawana Bay, another hotel development on Grand Anse Beach, which will be open in 2019. These properties will grow Grenada’s room stock by 32% in the next two years — which will lead to increased capacity of almost 3,000 licensed and certified rooms by the Grenada Tourism Authority.”

To further support the destination’s developing tourism industry, the Grenada Tourism Authority (GTA) and the Grenada Airports Authority (GAA) representatives attended Routes America 2018 from February 13 – 15 in Quito, Ecuador and met with 10 airlines to discuss expansion of service or new routes. The interest in Grenada is growing, and with the 16% growth in arrivals from the US market (67,250) in 2017 over 2016 and US market share at an all-time high of 46%, this strong performance data has piqued the interest of the US based airlines.

Building on this momentum, the marketing and sales team attended the New York Times Travel Show, CHTA Marketplace in Puerto Rico, Boston Globe Show and the Telegraph Travel Show in London in the first two months of the year. Virgin Atlantic, in collaboration with Unilad Adventure, launched a destination video on social media which shares the many reasons to visit Grenada, Spice of the Caribbean in 2018. With this heightened activity, the GTA forecasts a 6% growth in total visitor arrivals performance for 2018 which will benefit all the citizens of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique.