Nearly 29 million people visited the Caribbean last year, an all-time high for the destination.

"Despite political, security and economic uncertainties and challenges in our main source markets, tourist arrivals to the Caribbean increased by 4.2 per cent in 2016, better than the 3.9 per cent overall internationally," Secretary-General of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) High Riley announced today in presenting the Caribbean Tourism Performance Report 2016.

The tourism numbers reflect more than a million more visitors in 2016 than that of the previous year.

"Encouragingly, we welcomed over one million more visitors last year than in 2015, to reach 29.3 million, continuing our proud record of continuous growth for the seventh straight year," said Riley.

Visitor spending also grew, reaching US $35.5 billion, a growth of about 3.5 per cent over the previous year.

Canadians, however, were not among the travellers contributing to the growth in the market. Although Canada is normally a “robust” market for the Caribbean, last year travellers from Canada sank to 3.3 million arrivals. The decrease, 3.4 per cent less than 2015, is the first dip for Canadians since 1994. (It is only the second dip since 1982.)

The United States, on the other hand, continued to be the Caribbean's primary market. With some 14.6 million overnight arrivals from the U.S., tourism from the region grew 3.5 per cent over 2015.

Europe recorded the highest rate of growth among the Caribbean’s top markets. Strong numbers from Germany (8.2 per cent) and the United Kingdom (4.1 per cent) helped to skyrocket the numbers from Europe.

"Despite terrorist attacks in some countries, the Brexit referendum in the UK and bumpy economic outcomes across continental Europe, arrivals from that market climbed by 11.4 per cent, to reach 5.6 million,” said Riley. “The strong European performance was evident by the healthy increases of between six and 16.8 per cent in each month, compared to the corresponding month in 2015."

Within the Caribbean, intra-island travel grew by 3.6 per cent for the second straight year of growth.

Cruise traffic, on the other hand, grew at a slower pace than the rest of the country’s inbound numbers. In 2016, there were approximately 26.3 million cruise passengers to the Caribbean, a growth of just 1.3 per cent. Interesting, the hotel sector reflected negative growth, and all hotel indicators contracted, except available rooms, which grew by just one per cent, according to Smith Travel Research.