More go, but they spend less

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - It's a good news-bad news deal for tourism in the sun-soaked Caribbean. Visits are surging, but revenues are not keeping pace.

Analysts attribute the rising number of visitors to more cruise ships and flights to the region, and to people taking trips they had postponed because of the economic crisis. But when they get to their destination, Caribbean officials say, tourists are spending less.

"The bodies are traveling, obviously, but the spending is clearly impacted," said Josef Forstmayr, president of the Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Organization. "The larger destinations have it a little easier. They have more resources, they get better airlift, they have better products."

Caribbean countries such as the Bahamas, St. Lucia, and the Dominican Republic announced record numbers of visitors last year. Overall, more than 23 million visitors were reported last year, a number that Caribbean tourism officials hope to surpass this winter season.

Registration for the Caribbean Marketplace, the region's largest marketing event, which will be held in the Bahamas in late January and aims to create vacation packages, is up by nearly 50 percent compared with last year, Forstmayr said.

"We expect a strong winter," he said. "Overall bookings from all the islands are up from last year."

New air routes announced by JetBlue from Puerto Rico to St. Thomas and to St. Maarten also could bring additional visitors, said Gilda Gumbs-Samuel, executive director of the Anguilla Hotel and Tourism Association.

Anguilla, a speck of an island in the eastern Caribbean, saw a record double-digit increase in tourists last year.

The cruise-ship industry also promises to bring in thousands of tourists this winter, said Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor in chief of CruiseCritic.com.

Last winter, cruise lines withdrew their ships from the Caribbean and placed them in the Mediterranean, hoping to attract a wealthy European market.

"That was a radical experiment, and it failed," Spencer Brown said. "So the ships are back in the Caribbean this year."

Puerto Rico, a cruise-ship hub, anticipates a 20 percent increase in visits, bolstered by the arrival of the Celebrity Silhouette, newest ship in Celebrity's Solstice class, which is expected to generate $3.6 million in revenue during the winter season, said Jose Perez-Riera, the U.S. territory's commerce and economic development secretary.