Tourism number has surpassed pre-pandemic figures

Tourism in the tiny Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire is sizzling with the performance for this year being phenomenal with no signs of a slowdown.

The island continues to see stayover arrival numbers surpass its pre-pandemic totals, according to a new report from Tourism Corporation Bonaire. The island reported 39,687 visitors in the last three months, representing a 10 per cent improvement over the same period in 2019, before the onset of the pandemic.

Visitors from The Netherlands accounted for 51 per cnt of all arrivals, followed by the United States at 23 per cent.

Bonaire’s Commissioner of Economic Development and Tourism Hennyson Thielman commented: “It is good to see that the efforts made in the past years for the benefit of our vision, the strategic tourism master plan and the ‘Tourism Recovery Plan’ are now being translated into several steps in the right direction. If this development continues like this, it will translate into better well-being for the people of Bonaire, our ultimate goal.”

Miles Mercera, CEO of Tourism Corporation Bonaire, said Bonaire’s visitors tend to be between 46 and 65, with the average stay by Americans at seven nights per visit and 14 nights for Dutch visitors. Hotel occupancy on the island was 66 per cent in the third quarter, meeting the island’s pre-pandemic numbers.

Bonaire has been widely recognised for many years in the diving community as one of the world’s best shore diving destinations. Bonaire’s Marine Park offers a total of 86 named dive sites and is home to over 57 species of soft and stony coral and more than 350 recorded fish species.