Chief of Staff in the office of the Prime Minister, Ambassador Lionel Hurst, praised the work of the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority (ABTA) in marketing the twin-island nation as the country reportedly marks a record number of air arrivals for the year.
The Cabinet said last week that a record of 126,000 air arrivals were recorded for the period of January to April 2024, surpassing the previous record of 118,000 air arrivals during the same period in 2019.
With the expectations that the major events of the SIDS4 conference last month, and the ICC Cricket World Cup this month—both of which were not included in the Cabinet notes— there is likely to be a greater increase in air arrivals recorded.
Ambassador Hurst praised the work of ABTA CEO Colin James and his team in their work exposing the country to new markets.
“We have a great marketing team led by Colin James… and he has just been very good at exciting the market about Antigua and Barbuda.
“There has also been the accumulation of demand for vacations and holidays in the post-Covid period, and so what we are seeing is also this pent-up demand being expressed by way of the number of bookings that the hotels and the airlines are receiving,” he said.
Hurst said that the exceptional marketing of the Tourism Authority represented an investment by the government in the economic growth of the country.
Meanwhile, Minister of Tourism Charles Fernandez also gave his views on the record air arrivals.
“We are very pleased; this has been the best April and four months…so we are on our way to have a record year,” he said.
Minister Fernandez said that Antigua also remains on track for record arrivals by sea for the year as well.
“We’re doing better in terms of cruise for the summer…bearing in mind, that we’re going through summer with cricket, and we just had SIDS.
“We look forward to even bigger numbers…we just hope that we stay away from the ravages of any serious storm or hurricane and definitely, we will be on our way to another record-breaking year,” the Minister said.