Inbound tourism volume in the Caribbean 2017-2021

Given their name by the Caribbean Sea, the Caribbean islands have earned themselves a reputation as a highly sought-after tourist destination. So much so collectively, the region welcomed more than 25 million foreign visitor arrivals annually before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In 2020 and 2021, nonetheless, the Caribbean's international tourism dropped significantly as a result of the crisis.

A big-game market

As of 2019, the island nations ranked the majority of the highest GDP generating travel and tourism destinations worldwide, contributing approximately 20 percent of travel and tourism’s GDP in the Latin American region that year. However, under the Covid-19 pandemic, the archipelagos inevitably faced dramatic revenue losses as the global tourism sector was forced to come to a standstill.

Trouble in paradise

As the most prominent cruise destinations, the region was set to lose around 1.2 million tourism jobs in 2020, which would cause a significant blowback in region’s job market. In 2019, for instance, the Caribbean’s number of jobs directly related to tourism was almost equaled to that number, with the Dominican Republic accounting for more than one fourth of them.