By Frank Martin

As always, the new year is going fast, but the first quarter of 2023, at the end, has shown something crucial.

That is that the recovery after the global pandemic is also going smoothly.

The Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), one of the most important entities in this world economic branch, has just announced that prospects for the recovery process have been extended from January to March.

Nicola Madden-Greig, who chairs the CHTA, further published that “the Caribbean region as a whole is proving to be the fastest recovering sector globally, ahead of the Asian, US and European markets.”

For Madden-Creig , Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda are three tourist destinations in the Eastern Caribbean that are regionally leading the restoration of the leisure industry to the levels it had before the pandemic.

Those islands have had the additional achievement of being the most resilient in this part of the world.

When analyzing the immediate future (that is, the rest of this year) the forecasts are even more comfortable for the sector.

According to CHTA, reservations already obtained for the period shows that the spring that has already begun and the summer that will follow will probably give the great surprise of approaching the 50% increase in arrivals in the period from June to August.

And the news is not only good for the Caribbean.

Latin America in general is proving to be a major player in tourism with increases in arrivals in Argentina, Colombia and Panama.

According to the predictions, it is very favorable that tourists arriving in Latin American nations will continue to travel to the Caribbean, favoring everyone.

Other islands in the Caribbean, such as Cuba, are still suffering the consequences of Covid-19, although the island already has almost complete control of the epidemic.

Despite adverse situations with the economy, the Cuban destination received just over 246,000 visitors last January, which represents a very significant increase compared to the 86,424 visitors that entered in January 2022.

Canadian tourism was once again the main issuing market.

At the beginning of 2023   532,487 Canadian tourists, 286,443 Cuban Americans, 100,494 Americans from the United States and 83,025, among others, returned to Cuba.

The Cuban proposal for the entire year is to attend 3.5 million foreign visitors, getting closer to the good times of 2019.