The stats are in! See how much the BVI earned from tourism in 2020
The BVI earned an estimated $112,488,463 from tourism last year when the territory endured an economic lockdown because of an outbreak of the COVID-19 virus.
This estimated earning shows how much the industry suffered, especially when compared to the estimated $389,912, 630.06 earned from tourism in 2019 and the estimated $232,510,640.10 earned in 2018.
The aforementioned earnings generated last year is only 29 percent of the overall tourism revenue for 2019.
Speaking in the House of Assembly on Tuesday, April 20, Premier Andrew Fahie said the estimated yearly revenues show what was earned from all areas of the tourism industry including hotels, charter boats, rented accommodations, owned accommodations, overnight visitors, cruise visitors, excursionists, day-trippers, etcetera.
The Premier also detailed statistics on the number of visitors who stopped in the BVI over the last three years.
The figures provide further insight into the impact COVID-19 had on the local tourism industry. Last year only saw the BVI receiving 34 percent of the visitors it had the year before.
Below are the figures generated by the BVI’s Central Statistics Office:
2018 – 757,015 visitors
2019 – 894,991 visitors
2020 – 305,371 visitors
When COVID-19 hit the territory in March 2020, the BVI closed its borders to international traffic for almost the entire year and reopened its main airport on December 8.
Since then, visitors have been trickling into the territory but tourism could not fully rebound as the seaports — which account for most of the BVI’s yearly visitors — remained closed for another three months.
Elected leaders and industry players have estimated that it will take the BVI’s tourism industry an entire year to start showing signs of full recovery.
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If this is Jan – Dec 2020 I am guessing most of that revenue is from Jan and Feb while we were still open and good. Would be intereating to see breakdown by month and source.
It seems to me like l**ng is normal for Andrew fahie lol
And some stupid ppl believe every l**s that comes out this man w***ed mouth
Mr.Premier we off to a good start LOl Seventeen ST Thomas visitors on the first day, thanks to All your costly Protocols
1700 Boat ferries Made
2975 Health Department Terminal
170 Ports Fees
Taxi guys ??
Cruise pier Null
The VIP did more damage than covid
probably most of that revenue came from Jan-March. But, I think we all know this. PS. There will be no magical recovery in 2022 if they don’t change how they do things.
Ouch. 72% drop year after year
That alone is reason to reopen. No wonder we are hurting. Proof is in the numbers
The numbers lie, Hon. Fahie tells the truth and the truth is all glory be to God all will be well in the BVI and the overdrive is coming so fasten your seatbelt, tighten your helmet for the ride ahead. Land of the Turtle Dove, holding tight to BVILove!
In light of the circumstances, we can count ourselves still blessed. No one in BVI has died of hunger or starvation because of COVID 19 but millions pre COVID 19 died of these causes.
Let’s start by counting all blessings and we will surely be happy and healthy. Worrying kills.
But yet we are to act as if all is well and businesses should just stick it out and be ready for whenever they decide to open up. These guys are clueless and we need a Government with people who actually understand business and how an economy works.
so why don’t you ran for the office and lets see if you do any better. every leader in the world are being criticized for the handling of COVID why should our government be any less blamed.
Go s*** your mother and go look work to do!! If those elected can’t do the job they need to go the f**k home. You are trying to defend their nonsense by coming on here spewing rubbish. Representatives are elected to LEAD and if they do not have a clue they need to vacate their seats, plain and simple
Now hear your ignorant A*s. that the mentality of some of our people, not everyone that blogs against ya’ll are not from here I was born here by BVI Lander parents so I full breed, not sure about you. So instead of talking s**t about going home. Go lead if you want to see different. Nonsense!!
Learn to read! The poster never said you’re not from here.
That all being said, the other statistics of only 9000 vaccinated people in the bvi, strongly suggest that people either don’t care or better said, have no issue with current state and feel they can cope with the situation…
Otherwise go and vaccinated, the gov will not be opening up in June. It’s just stupid pr that will blow on primer face.
He think ie can scare people to vaccinate, he is doing the opposite… they feel it will open us with taking vaccination…
People, if you care, go vaccinated
Don the be a prick. Get one
I dont understand how the BVI got so much revenue in 2 months, Jan/Feb 2020. Lockdowns and border closures severely impacted tourism and still are.
Surely this revenue was earned from staycations.
Can you say money laundering.
I dont understand it either. The Math is not adding up at all. Where did these numbers come from?
Now show us the actual cost of operations to offset the revenue and we see where we are. I bet you most if not everyone is running at a loss hoping at some point they can start operating again. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that a lot of the revenue is charter boat and property owners just maintaining their property. No-one can sustain this indefinitely.
Wake up your highness – we need you to step up or step aside.
Everyone is running on overdrafts, others are further in debt and running on fumes/promises. Add to the fact that many businesses invested monies for December opening, then March opening and nothing happened, are now strapped for cash and may not be able to stock and staff for the potential real reopening. Meanwhile if you listen to the Premier and his disciples, we should all stop complaining because we didn’t get COVID under their watch.
Now show us March 2020 – March 2021.
Shutdown started end of March, really need 4/1/20-4/1/21
Atleast it’s still in the hundred millions I guess….given that we’ve been locked down for over a year now.
News Flash nearly every country in the world lost revenue. Big and small. Closed borders equals no tourist it’s not rocket science and should not be a surprise.
True but not every country squandered relief money and have no plans on revitalizing their economies! When you research most islands in the Caribbean, they already have a PUBLISHED PLAN spanning to the end of this year. Businesses can plan long-term and manage expectations because they have solid plans on the way forward. We don’t even know what the plan is for next week in the BVI, they just make it up as they go and everyone should just sit down, shut up and wait for a fear mongering FB Live from Captain Fahie or Lieutenant Carvin. You saying that everywhere has problems so we should be satisfied with this Government’s poor performance is like saying Trinidad has over 200 murders for the year so we should be happy with 6.
Apples and oranges 6 murders in 4 months in the BVI is a lot more than the BVI’s average. I am speaking specifically about tourist numbers in 2020 which is the subject of the article. Nobody in their right mind expected to see record numbers when the borders were closed from mid march or April.
It’s not a surprise to anyone but the Government, who try to make everything look so good they have become a laughingstock. We all know how hard we have been hit. Like a previous poster said, let’s see the data for March 2020 to March 2021. And let’s break out staycations from money coming into the territory.
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
just checked – almost 500,000 tourist in USVI in 2020. Only a 32% drop. They lost some but they will survive to fight another day – right now you almost cannot find a hotel for the summer and all boats are booked. Killing it!!!!
thanks your highness – keep on doing what your doing. That sound you hear at night across the water is us in the USVI just raking in the Benjamins.
You got our drugs but we got your tourists…lol
Guessing 90% of that came before the lockdown at the end of March 20′. If they stick with the quarantine requirements for the next few months, followed by hurricane season and a lack of bookings due to quarantine uncertainty, I bet that number will be much lower in 2021. Some quick math tells us the BVI will have lost ~ 600 million dollars in tourism revenue.
How many came from the government pocket? understanding that some of those revenues may come from the quarantine that was payed by the government self, and the rest by locals who stayed at the facilities.
@ Mestizo
I would like to see the actual breakdown by the month for Government was paying the bill for persons to stay in quarantine for the entire period of 2020. Give us the figures that government spent on that so that it can be subtracted from that $112M.
What we need is a month by month breakdown as well as a month by month number of visitors to compare how much of it was locals doing staycations versus tourist.
This figure is exaggerated!!
I don’t believe the figures. Tourists don’t spend that much. How did 305k visitors get into the BVI? The airport closed on 10 March 2020 and I didn’t see many tourists after the airports opened.
Thats an average of $368 per tourist- thats only two nights in a hotel?
Need to see the breakdown of that $112 million as to whete this money came from.
So January 2020 to 10 March and from 8 December to 31 December – $112488463 from 305k tourists. Its not possible if you work out the days and people on flights.
With the murder rate in the last 6 months why does the Government think that tourists (and workers) would want to come here? BVI will be lucky to keep the expats and registered companies here that earn the money for the FSC which used to be about $300 million a year and that’s without the money earned from the work permits – 1700 work permit holders lost their jobs – that’s a loss to the coffers as well. But for some reason they don’t care about expats but are more concerned with tourists – but neither will come if they think they are going to get shot.
@ Mestizo
I would like to see the actual breakdown by the month for Government was paying the bill for persons to stay in quarantine for the entire period of 2020. Give us the figures that government spent on that so that it can be subtracted from that $112M.
What we need is a month by month breakdown as well as a month by month number of visitors to compare how much of it was locals doing staycations versus tourist.
This figure is exaggerated!!