If you don’t set your sights on where you’re going then you definitely won’t get there. Tourism industry leaders need to ask themselves what is the magic number for tourism arrivals, both cruise and air? 
 
The first formula to consider in relation to air arrivals is how much room stock do we have and how many arrivals do we need to maintain a sustainable occupancy rate? For the sake of this thought provoking exercise consider the following formula created using the licensed room stock data found on the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism website and combine it with the conservative approach to an ideal average year round occupancy rate.
 
In the Cayman Islands we are faced with a chicken and egg situation regarding tourism air arrival numbers. The airlines will not add additional flights unless there is significant demand and adequate room stock to justify the routes. The occupancy levels are tied to airlift and if the consumer searches for a flight and the connectivity is not there or it appears too inconvenient to travel, then they will quickly search another island. From a tourism perspective we need to approach this situation from all angles.
 

How can we increase the demand for airlift?  One option is to focus on raising our occupancy levels and ensuring that the flights that do service GCM are running at a higher capacity. Increased profit will certainly spark an interest for increased airlift! Then we can consider what other contributing factors would entice airlines to fly here. Is it the cost to fly their aircraft here, the ease of operations, or even the length of our runway? These are all valid questions that need to be considered for our long term strategic planning.
 
Cruise Tourism involves different factors. Some of the questions one might ask when analyzing the magic number for cruise arrivals per year are: Are we satisfied with cruise arrivals? How can we increase spending while on island? In talking with many downtown retailers who rely on cruise tourism, they will admit that on the extremely busy days there is a point where you don’t make additional revenue. In essence there is a cap at which there are too many visitors to generate additional profit for businesses. So what is that cap?
 
As an important representative body for the Tourism Industry, The Cayman Islands Tourism Association intends to look into these questions more in depth to ensure that our stakeholder input can be given at a more informed level allowing for more productive strategic planning. CITA looks forward to pursuing answers to these questions and engaging in conversations with both private and public to determine a more focused and sustainable approach to the development of our Tourism Product for our future.