The island seemed reasonably busy over the Christmas holidays, indicating the start of a more promising tourism season than the less-than-stellar one which followed the destructive passage of Hurricane Irma in September 2017. Cruise calls are certainly back in numbers, with seven ships carrying a total of 26,900 passengers and 9,900 crew on Boxing Day alone.
There were also two on Christmas Day and this year they were not met by a largely-shutdown Philipsburg, because government had not proclaimed the usual mandatory business closure on December 25. When one adds another three ships on Christmas Eve plus five on Saturday and three on Sunday it becomes clear that the downtown shopping area and other prime day-tourist spots had quite some traffic during what felt like a very long holiday weekend.
Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) too is seeing a relative return to normalcy both in terms of commercial fights and private jets. No fewer than 114 of the latter were expected to land at SXM from December 14 to January 31, with 21 arriving on Boxing Day alone.
This is obviously most welcome after the record 7,939 annual aircraft movements in this general aviation sector of 2016 had dropped by 1,488 last year. The upcoming remodelling of the fixed-base operations (FBO) facility that exclusively caters to this segment of the travelling public is crucial going forward, especially as other nearby islands such as St. Kitts and Antigua have not been sitting still in this regard.
Many luxury yachts, another part of the destination’s high-end tourism, have returned as well. Some of them come and go to, for example, Anguilla and St. Barths, but their presence with often wealthy guests aboard even if on the way in or out still provides a major boost to the local hospitality industry and its image.
So, although several major resorts continue closed and plenty remains to be done in that sense, the signs of economic recovery – slowly but surely – are unmistakable.
