October 2015: Over 1,170 America’s Cup Visitors
[Updated] According to a recently released Bermuda Tourism Authority report, 768 visitors came to the island in October 2015 for ‘America’s Cup Vacation’ while 409 visitors came for ‘America’s Cup Business’.
The Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series was held in Bermuda from October 16-18, 2015, and saw elite teams from the USA, Sweden, Japan, Great Britain, New Zealand and France take part in the high speed sailing competition.
Chart extracted from the report showing the air visitor arrivals by type:
The BTA said they added the America’s Cup categories to the arrival card earlier this year specifically to record the America’s Cup impact on visitor arrivals, and as long as people complete the arrival card correctly, it provides a fairly accurate count.
The America’s Cup purpose of visit is listed in three different categories in this report: vacation, business and visiting friends & family.
BTA video overview of new visitor arrival form system:
The BTA’s recent stakeholder newsletter said, “An October jam-packed with visitor groups and events fuelled a 44% year-over-year growth in total vacation arrivals for the month.
“Air vacation visitors were up 12%, yacht arrivals up 13% and cruise arrivals spiked 54%. Total air arrivals [which includes business, conferences, visiting friends and relatives as well as vacation] were up 15% year-over-year. In the hotel sector occupancy was up 16% in October and revenue per available room surged 34% year-over-year.
“Although the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series made a sizeable impact on the overall performance for October, the combination of the Royal Bermuda Regiment Tattoo, the Nike Golf PGA Team Championship of Canada, Argo Gold Cup, Round the Sound Swim, Commonwealth Parliamentary Association meeting and a regional conference for business leaders collectively made a positive impact.”
Update 11.02am: We have been told that these figures do not include anyone who visited for the event on a work permit, such as concert performers, media etc. The figures from that area will be in the Economic Impact Report that the ACEA is expected to release in the future.
The October 2015 Measures and Projections follows below [PDF here]:
$21,367 per person to date. AC will make more money off of this than BDA will. Not a good idea to have trust babies running a country. AC should be put in charge of Tourism – those boys know how to run an event.
Quo Fata Ferunt
Of course Bermuda will, apartments, restaurants, grocery stores, retails outlets, all have seen an increase while AC was here. You are not listening very carefully are you?
When you have the Fox counting the hens, in the coop.
Are you referring to Burt on the PAC and not resigning, when the PAC determines what to do aboutn accoutibility re: The Auditor Generals reports which slam the PLP for a period when was Premiers right hand as Junior Minister.
Why aren’t you demanding his resignation?
Yes? Go on? Your sentence is unfinished?
Pulic skool.
San George….every village has an idiot. Thanks for being ours.
Do you have some numbers of your own to share idiot? easy to call others names behind your keyboard is it not? At least san george has given us some perspective on how much has been spent to lure a visitor here…
So you are calling someone an idiot behind a pen name , where are your perspectives?
I am sorry , I didn’t read the name you were replying to , my bad .
Hey Jahmani.. idiot!
easy there Jahmani…try not to be so quick to judge….”idiot” is the name they have chosen for themselves – not my choosing. I am responding to a comment made by “idiot” – see above.
you have been caught speeding so to speak…
I get angry with all the negativity about the America’s Cup a la San George when these same people are dead quiet about the overspent $20M on Port Royal, the additional $32M spend on Heritage Wharf and the millions unaccounted for or misspent in the recent Auditors Report. Talk about blind followers who can’t think for themselves
cruise arrivals spiked 54%. Please explain ?
What is it exactly that you can’t understand?
@Coffee So if you take last year’s October cruise arrivals and half that amount, the number you get is how many more came in October this year.
Some of that dramatic increase is because in October 2014 we suffered two hurricanes back to back and a few cruise ships cancelled trips here, which would equate to a loss of few thousand visitors. That and an increase in scheduled cruise ships made that number jump – impressively!
Don’t forget we had Joaquin in the first week of October this year.
Wow, I would’ve thought more than 1170. But then again, the elite always has been a much smaller number than us “real world” folk.
But we simply cannot compete for the ‘real world folk’, as you put it… that is unless we adopt a pay scale similar to our carribean competitors… how does a $40/$50 a week minimum wage sound for you. This is why we are targeting the ‘elite’ who may be smaller in number, but spend more and can afford us. Even the PLP can’t fight that reality, no matter how much they promise, they tried already and even at the global economic peak, they couldn’t attract the same number of visitors we had prior to their ’98 election. Remember their 100 day turn around promise, never happened, and they spent 2 to 3 times what is being spent now going after the mass market, best they could muster was a minor blip during an economic boom.
You didn’t read the full article now did you.