86 December 2015 - Business View Caribbean
George Town Revitalization Project that ties in with the
cruise-berthing project to enhance commerce in the
capital city. Our airports in Grand Cayman and Cayman
Brac will go under construction this year to expand the
capacity, and that certainly will support our industry in
welcoming more guests. We ended 2014 almost 11
percent up over 2013, and the Cayman Islands has
experienced significant growth overall in cruise and air
arrivals.
BV: What do you attribute that to? Were you expect-
ing that kind of number and what do you think led to
such a nice spike?
HARRIS:
The Cayman Islands as a vacation destina-
tion certainly had been trending very strongly all year
in terms of visitor arrival statistics. At one point, we
were up 12 percent consistently and I would say very
strong creative marketing initiatives were behind the
increase. Our global team was challenged to host in-
market activations that were creative, engaging and
memorable. I would say we remained top of mind with
our target audience, which led to the success. In addi-
tion, very good partnerships with the hoteliers and ac-
commodations properties in the Cayman Islands led to
the success with very attractive travel packages. Our
visitation in support of tourism traffic has a very high
return visitor rate; people just fall in love with the Cay-
man Islands once they have visited. This is attributed
to having a very positive and pleasant service while on
vacation and truly experiencing Caymankind.
