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Tourism in Curacao keeps growing in January 2008
March 5 2008

(Willemstad, Cura�ao - March 5) Preliminary figures released by the Cura�ao Tourist Board for January 2008 show that 29.308 stopover tourists visited Cura�ao in January 2008, a 33.5% increase over the same month in 2007 while the preliminary average occupancy figures released by CHATA were at a 89.5% for January 2008 compared with 86.5% last year.
Traffic from Europe grew 7.0% from 10,717 arrivals in January 2007 to 11,463 visitors during January 2008. Much of the increase in European traffic continue to come from Holland, which showed a 7.9% increase in traffic, from 8935 visitors in January 2007 to 9639 in January 2008. Traffic also grew from other important European markets such as Belgium (11.5%) and Germany (+10%). Other European Markets that performed well were Switzerland (+44.4%), Portugal (+35.0%), Finland (+34.8%), Austria (24.0%) and Norway (16.4%). However Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom did not perform very well.

The problem with airlift continues to be a bottleneck in the simultaneous growth of the different European markets. An increase in a market shows a decrease in another market for the simple reason of seats availability on the trans-Atlantic route.


Overall traffic out of the South American markets continue to show signs of sustained growth, traffic was up for all but two major markets (Peru -20.6% and Ecuador -15.3%) charter
Visitor numbers out of Venezuela continue to positively impact our local economy and the accommodation capacities on island. Traffic grew by triple digit numbers from 1555 arrivals in 2007 to 7545 arrivals in January 2008. Traffic was also up (140%) for Brazil, (114%) for Guyana, 66% for Suriname, (33.8%) for Colombia, (10.6%) from Argentina and Rest South America also grew by (64.0%).

In general traffic from the Caribbean markets were positive with declines out of the Dominican Republic (15.3%) Trinidad & Tobago (-11.0) and Haiti (-0.7). Major Caribbean Markets performed very well, traffic grew out of Aruba (+32.7%), Barbados (+26.7%), Jamaica (9.6%) and rest Caribbean was up by (12.6%). The Puerto Rican that has been steadily declining all through 2007 remained at 67 passengers, the same total as last year.

The less favorable economic prospects that have started to emerge in the last quarter of 2007 might be impacting travel to Curacao for the North American market.
Traffic from the USA was down by 9.6% compared with January 2007 from 4205 arrivals in 2007 to 3800 in January 2008 and was also down 13.8% from Canada.

The number of intended visitor nights also increased in January 2008, by (19.2%) compared with January 2007.

The number of cruise visitors showed a small decline (0.3%) in January 2008, from 60.009 in January 2007 to 59.839 this year with the number of ships calling growing from 39 in 2007 to 43 in January 2008.

Prospects for February and March look even more positive with major conferences and holidays expected in the upcoming months. Tourism is generating an income for our island and offering more job opportunities for our community.