According to Aruba Tourism Authority, Aruba received 100,178 stopover arrivals in July 2021, 18.4% more than the 84,592 stopovers it received in June 2021.
Aruba closed its borders to tourist arrivals as of March 17th 2020 and re-opened only to visitors from Curacao and Bonaire as of June 15th 2020 and then to visitors from Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean as of July 1st 2020. Aruba re-opened to visitors from the USA on July 10th 2020. Consequently, there were just 12,921 stopover visitors in July 2020.
The 100,178 stopovers received in July 2021 were 96.8% of the 103,464 stopovers received in July 2019. Compared with 2019, stopover arrivals from the USA increased by 8.9%, growing from 79,725 arrivals in July 2019 to 86,789 arrivals in July 2021. Arrivals from the USA comprised 86.6% of all arrivals in July 2021 up from 77.1% in July 2019.
Arrivals from Canada dropped by 86.9%, from 2,692 in July 2019 to 353 stopovers in July 2021. Arrivals from the Netherlands grew by 38.7%, from 3,671 in July 2019 to 5,091 in July this year. Aruba re-opened its ports to visitors in June of this year and during July 2021 received four cruise ship calls and a total of 6,930 cruise passengers.
In the first seven months of 2021 Aruba saw a 76.5% increase in the number of stopover visitors, growing from 241,673 visitors in the first seven months of 2020 to 426,565 visitors in the first seven months of this year. The number of stopovers from the USA grew by 103.3% during the first seven months, from 185,108 in 2020 to 376,290 through the end of July 2021. Compared with the first seven months of 2019, the 426,565 stopover visitors received in the first seven months of 2021 was 62.8% of the 679,113 stopovers received in the first seven months of 2019. There were 376,290 stopovers from the USA in the first seven months of 2021, 73.1% of the 515,068 received from the USA in the first seven months of 2019.
The number of visitors staying in hotels in the first seven months of 2021 declined by 44.5% compared with the same seven months of 2019, falling from 350,892 visitors in 2019 to 194,781 in the same seven months of 2021. The share of visitors staying in hotels fell from 51.7% in the first seven months of 2019 to 45.7% in the same seven months of 2021.
In the first seven months of 2021 140,936 visitors used timeshare accommodation, 78.0% of the 180,579 visitors who used such accommodation in the first seven months of 2019, with the sector’s share growing from 26.6% in 2019 to 33.0% in 2021.
The total number of visitors staying in timeshare resorts grew by 124.8% in the first seven months of 2021 compared with the same seven months of 2020.
Visitors using other accommodation – private homes, condominiums, short term rental accommodation and apartments – fell by 38.5% when comparing the first seven months of 2019 with the same seven months of 2021 from 147,642 visitors in 2019 to 90,848 in 2021, with the share dropping from 21.7% in 2019 to 21.3% in 2021.
In the first seven months of 2021 the primary carrier was JetBlue which brought in 124,232 non-resident visitors, 29.1% of all stopover arrivals, while American Airlines brought in 109,815 non-resident visitors, 25.7% of all visitors. United Airlines brought in 69,925 visitors with Delta carrying 49,781 arrivals. These four carriers brought in 82.9% of all visitors in the first seven months of 2021.
Aruba received 7 cruise ship calls in 2021 with 8,519 cruise passengers compared with the 98 calls cruise ships made in 2020 and 255,384 passengers.
