The Decline of the Caribbean Traveler

A prize-winning study asks an uncomfortable question for the region’s tourism industry: why are Caribbean residents choosing Toronto, New York or Europe over a short hop to the next island?

The Caribbean spends enormous energy courting visitors from North America and Europe. Far less attention goes to a market on its own doorstep: its own people. That is the quiet argument behind a new honor from the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO). On October 7, at the State of the Tourism Industry Conference (SOTIC) in Guyana, the CTO presented the first Caribbean Tourism Intelligence Award to Dr. Dalano DaSouza and Dr. Dennis McCall Jr. Their paper tackles a question with real consequences for governments, airlines and hoteliers: why do Caribbean residents increasingly pick destinations outside the region over travel within it?

For anyone interested in Caribbean travel, the findings are a useful reality check. Intra-regional tourism is often described as the sector’s untapped growth engine, but this research suggests the barriers are structural, not just a matter of marketing.

The winning paper is titled “Decline of the regional traveler? Investigating new factors driving substitution of intra-Caribbean tourism with international travel.” It was published in Tourism Critiques: Practice and Theory.

The study drew on 1,103 valid survey responses from 23 Caribbean countries and territories. It looked at how airfare, connectivity, visa access, migration, shopping and demographics shape where people choose to travel.

DaSouza, a Vincentian-born public policy professional and economics lecturer at the University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus in Antigua and Barbuda, accepted the award for both authors. He said the work began in 2024 and tested five hypotheses about the shift toward travel beyond the region. McCall Jr. is an aviation strategy and sustainability specialist who leads the BA (Hons) International Tourism Management program at Teesside University.

The hypotheses covered:

• High regional airfares and expanding international connectivity
• Visa acquisition, waivers and migration
• Import duties, taxes and fees
• Perceptions of geographic and cultural similarity
• Demographic factors, including age, gender, education, income and nationality

The most striking finding concerns schedules. Sixty-nine percent of respondents agreed that existing flight schedules made travel outside the Caribbean more convenient than travel within it.

That point goes beyond the familiar complaint about expensive fares. It suggests that routes, timings and connections matter as much as the price on the ticket. A traveler weighing a long weekend will not choose a destination that takes two flights and a layover if a direct overseas option exists.

As general background rather than a finding from the study, intra-Caribbean air travel has long been criticized for limited direct routes and for itineraries that can be awkward to piece together. Compare that with Europe, where dense networks of short-haul routes make cross-border weekend trips routine. The Caribbean is made of islands, so air and sea links carry far more weight in shaping demand.

How Visas Changed Travel Habits

Visa access emerged as a second powerful influence. DaSouza said respondents were asked how obtaining visas, waivers or travel clearances for destinations such as Canada, the United States and the Schengen Area had affected their travel.

The result: 69 percent reported traveling less within the Caribbean and more outside the region after gaining that access.

For tourism planners, the implication is that easier access to overseas destinations puts regional islands in direct competition for residents’ travel spending. Once a traveler holds a visa that opens a major gateway city, the regional alternative has to earn its place.

The researchers also found that high import duties, taxes and fees encourage overseas shopping trips. For some travelers, a getaway doubles as a chance to buy goods at lower cost, which makes the cost of living at home part of the tourism story.

One assumption did not hold up. The data did not support the idea that Caribbean residents shun neighboring islands because they feel too similar to home.

“Persons are still willing to go to different islands,” DaSouza said. “What we find is that there is a greater pull for international travel in terms of novelty.”

In other words, the appeal lies in something new, and that is a challenge regional destinations can work on. Smaller islands with distinct food, festivals, landscapes and heritage have a story to tell, but it has to be told in ways that make them feel fresh to a neighbor.

Income also plays a role. “As persons get more income, they travel more internationally,” DaSouza noted. That suggests affordability and access need to be addressed alongside the experiences travelers want.

The authors and the reporting around the study are careful about its limits. It used non-probability sampling, and 83 percent of respondents held a university degree. The results offer genuine insight into the travelers surveyed, but they should not be treated as a portrait of all Caribbean residents. A broader sample, including travelers with different education and income profiles, would sharpen the picture.

Why the CTO Is Investing in Research

The award sits within the CTO’s wider push to strengthen tourism intelligence. Announced at SOTIC in Barbados in 2025, it supports the organization’s Reimagine Plan, whose five strategic pillars are tourism intelligence, sustainable and regenerative tourism, advocacy, market competitiveness and people development.

CTO Director of Research Aliyyah Shakeer said the goal is broader than producing statistics. “For us, tourism intelligence is more than the research and statistics produced by the CTO,” she said. “It’s about helping to build a stronger ecosystem for tourism research, analytics and evidence-based decision-making across the Caribbean.”

She stressed that the research must be rooted in local realities: “At the same time, we need research that reflects our realities of the Caribbean, research that is grounded in our destinations, our communities, and our particular challenges and opportunities.”

The award was developed with input from the Caribbean Tourism Researchers Network, which operates under the International Tourism Studies Association, and submissions were assessed by four independent evaluators. This year’s conference also introduced the Caribbean Tourism Research Forum, which brought together researchers, policymakers and practitioners. Shakeer said the CTO hopes to link the forum more closely with the award and give researchers more chances to present their work.

Neil Walters, the CTO’s Director of Finance and Resource Management, framed the stakes in practical terms: “Reliable evidence helps us understand what is changing, where opportunities lie and how best to direct our resources.”

Data as a Tool for Winning Flights

The air connectivity theme ran through the conference. The award’s sponsor, Airport Strategy & Marketing (ASM), is an aviation consultancy, and its senior vice-president, Lee Lipton, argued that credible evidence is the foundation of growth. “Credible research ensures that strategies are not just aspirational, but actionable,” he said. He urged investment in emerging researchers studying climate resilience, sustainable development and shifting traveler preferences, and called for regional cooperation on shared air service challenges.

Earlier, Olivier Ponti, Amadeus’ Director of Market Intelligence & Insights, showed how flight schedules, searches and bookings can reveal where people want to go and when. His advice to destinations with limited marketing budgets was to start with economics. “The first question you should ask yourself is, what’s the economic impact of every single one of the travellers I’m going to bring to my destination?” he said.

Ponti noted that some visitors plan far ahead and stay longer, while others book close to departure and can fill rooms at short notice. Matching demand data against available flights can also expose markets where interest outstrips seat capacity, which strengthens the case for more frequent service. “That’s the way to speak the same language as the airlines,” he said.

For residents of the region, the research validates a familiar frustration: getting between islands can be harder than getting to a major overseas city. For visitors from outside the Caribbean, the story matters too. Better regional connectivity is what makes multi-island itineraries realistic, whether that means pairing a stay in one island with a few days in another or building a longer trip around several cultures.

For the industry, the takeaway is that residents are a distinct market with their own motivations. They respond to schedules, taxes, visas and novelty, and they have options.

The award is a first, and its real test will be whether the evidence it spotlights changes decisions: new routes, smarter fares, easier travel rules and campaigns that make a neighboring island feel as exciting as a faraway city. Shakeer put the ambition plainly: “Ultimately, our ambition is bigger than one award or one forum. It’s to help build a stronger, more connected Caribbean tourism research community.”

If the region can turn that research into action, the next growth story in Caribbean travel may come from Caribbean travelers themselves.

More Caribbean Travel News