Bermuda tourism enjoys second best year

Arrivals shot up by 70,000 last year as Bermuda enjoyed its second best year ever, Tourism Minister Wayne Furbert said on Monday.

Furbert said the 12 per cent rise on 2010 figures was good news, but he told a media conference "the best was yet to come".

He said 655,236 people came to the island in 2011, which was the second-highest figure in the island's history.

It was second only to 2007 when 663,767 people arrived.

Furbert said Bermuda enjoyed an "outstanding reputation" abroad, adding: "There are still too many people overseas who do not know us as well as they should or feel the sense of urgency to pay us a visit.

"It is those individuals who present the challenge, and there is nothing I like more than a challenge."

Air arrivals for 2011 rose by almost two per cent on the previous year with 236,038 tourists flying in.

Cruise visitors increased by 19 per cent, while convention incentive groups rose by a whopping 116 per cent.

Furbert said the number of visitors from the United States and Europe had increased, but there had been a fall in the number of visitors from Canada, the United Kingdom and the rest of the world.

He said the outlook for 2012 "looks strong indeed".

January figures were up and hotel occupancy showed February to be a "positive month with a possible five per cent gain", added Furbert, who has been at the tourism ministry helm since last November.

Bermuda's once dominant tourism industry has been flagging for years, long outstripped by international business as the number one plank in the economy.

- CMC