ANTIGUA & BARBUDA GROWING TOURISM

Antigua & Barbuda Are Growing Their Tourism

News on Cruise & Resort Growth from Antigua & Barbuda

Colin C James, CEO of Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority recently laid out ambitious yet realistic plans for the sister island nation to develop improved infrastructure to facilitate more cruise passengers. ULTIMATE VACATIONS has word that a major All-Inclusive Resort is headed to Antigua.

During 2016 Antigua & Barbuda received 658,000 cruise passengers, James reported. His goal is to receive 1 million passengers by the 2019/2020 cruise season. Ambitious but doable. Antigua is blessed with a beach for every day of the year - 365 to be exact. So the lure to cruise passengers is an obvious one. With English speaking residents and only 45 inches of average rainfall per year, even greater reason to expect more tourist will find their way here. By the way Antigua is the sunniest of the Eastern Caribbean islands.

In 2016 Antigua updated its port area to accommodate Oasis-class ships. By the end of 2017, thanks to substantial updates to Port St. John, Oasis-class ships will be able to make calls. This will certainly aid efforts to accommodate more cruise passengers. There are even plans to construct a passenger terminal to support home-porting ships. This we see as unlikely until air carriers provide more flights to Antigua, with the possible exception of a smaller line such as Windstar which currently calls on both islands.
Sandals Grand Antigua Adult-Only All-Inclusive Resort as seen from the lobby. Taken by Jay French of ULTIMATE VACATIONS.
View of Sandals Grande Antigua from the lobby
As for the resort equation of this, Sandals Grande Antigua and a few other all-inclusive resorts currently grace Antigua. Big new for us is that Karisma Resorts will soon land on Antigua with one of their fabulous Gourmet All-Inclusive Resorts. 

Of course staff of ULTIMATE VACATIONS has been to Antigua & Barbuda. Just last month Jay spent a day on the pink sand shores of Barbuda while sailing on the Wind Surf, from Windstar Cruises. There is virtually nothing else on Barbuda, minus a tiny hotel. But my gosh the beaches are long, uninhabited, and simply gorgeous. 

Beautiful Barbuda beach taken by Jay French of ULTIMATE VACATIONS while on a Windstar Cruise.
Barbuda beach
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ULTIMATE VACATIONS travels all over the Caribbean and Mexico inspecting and staying at resorts and destination to better serve our clients with knowledgeable first-hand unbiased customized recommendations for their vacation, honeymoon or destination wedding.

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