If there was any doubt about the severity of Irma’s socioeconomic impact today’s story about Caribbean airlift from American carriers should put an end to that. Princess Juliana International Airport SXM saw a decline of no less than 62.4 per cent for December.
The latter translates to a drop of almost two-thirds. This is quite a lot also when compared to other hurricane-hit destinations such as Puerto Rico (-28.2 per cent) and the US Virgin Islands (-47.2 per cent).
Somewhat annoying is that ticket prices to St. Maarten were up for the holiday period by about 36.9 per cent as were those to St. Thomas by 26.6 per cent, while fares for San Juan and St. Croix were down by 22.3 and 23 per cent respectively. It might be worthwhile to discuss this disparity with the airlines involved and see what can be done.
Thankfully, cruise tourism is slowly picking up as witnessed by Tuesday’s presence of three passenger ships, but the numbers are far from what they were before. The same thing goes for visiting yachts and private jets.
Still, that’s all the destination has to work with for now, so making sure guests who do come have an enjoyable stay is perhaps more important than ever. No matter how you look at it, during the next weeks and months “The Friendly Island” will very much need to put its best foot forward.
