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By Aldeth Lewin, The Virgin Islands Daily News, St. ThomasMcClatchy-Tribune Regional News Aug. 28--While still not up to the 2008 levels prior to the recession, the number of visitors to the Virgin
Islands is continuing to grow, even in the off-season. The territory's tourism statistics for the month of June, released by the V.I. Economic Research Bureau this week, showed a 12.1 percent increase in arrivals compared with the same month in 2009. Overall, there were 164,945 visitors to the Virgin Islands in June -- 18,084 more than came in June 2009. Of the total number of arrivals, 108,235 came in on a cruise ship, and 59,710 came in through the airports. The number of cruise passengers coming to the territory saw the biggest increase -- 17.7 percent. There were 31 cruise ship calls to the Virgin Islands in June, an increase of 10.7 percent compared with last year. The St. Thomas-St. John District had 193,417 cruise passengers, which is a 21.4 percent growth from last June, but St. Croix saw a decline in cruise traffic in June compared with the previous year. St. Croix's cruise visitors dropped by almost 29 percent -- from 6,758 to 4,818. Air traffic saw only very modest growth, with an increase of about 3.1 percent in the territory. While St. Thomas air arrivals stayed level at about 1.1 percent, St. Croix experienced 9.2 percent more visitors -- jumping from 11,472 recorded last June to 12,530 recorded this June. Hotel occupancy averaged 58 percent territorywide in June, up slightly from the 56.4 average reported a year ago. Both districts saw the slight increase. In the first half of the year, the territory had a total of 1.4 million visitors, a 13.8 percent increase over the same period in 2009. Air arrivals, cruise arrivals and the number of ships were all up. Hotel occupancy averaged 64.8 percent from January to June. For the same period in 2009, the average occupancy rate was 60.1 percent. Hotel revenues increased slightly as well, growing about 3.1 percent from $10.2 million collected in the first six months of 2009 to $10.5 million collected in the same period this year. ----- To see more of The Virgin Islands Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, The Virgin Islands Daily News, St. Thomas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail
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