The Caribbean earns less from cruise than any other region in the world
Published on September 29, 2025
The Caribbean earns less from cruise ships than any other part of the world and a new tax is needed to rebalance the books, a World Bank official has said.
Lilia Burunciuc, director for the Caribbean at the Washington DC-based World Bank, warned that the region’s tourism model was unsustainable and called for separate countries to band together to thrash out better deals.
Lilia Burunciuc, Director for the Caribbean at the Washington DC-based World Bank
“The Caribbean is the largest region for cruise ship tourism, but gets the least per passenger,” she said, adding, “This is because there is a race to the bottom, again, because the region is not acting as a region”.
Lilia Burunciuc goes on to add that “We know that one cruise ship passenger brings 24 times less than one nature-based tourist. Twenty-four times less.”
She was speaking at the recent Wider Caribbean Regional Risk Conference, organised by the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) and held in Barbados earlier this month. Burunciuc highlighted that tourism continued to grow in the Caribbean, but slower than the average around the world.
She said, “For the last 20 years, the Caribbean region has been the slowest growing region in the world, even compared to other small states.”
Regional economist Marla Dukaran asks in a comment “Who is negotiating these deals? Whose interest are they seeking? Why is this happening when this sector does not deliver progress for our societies with the current usual structure, and race to the bottom, as outlined in this article?”
Source Cayman Compass
