KRALENDIJK – Last year almost 185 thousand tourists flew to the islands of the Caribbean Netherlands. The number of tourists who came to Bonaire by plane has increased by more than 55 percent compared to a year earlier and was above the level of 2019, the last year before the corona crisis. This is evident from provisional figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS).

Bonaire received the lion’s share of visitors. More than 173 thousand tourists visited Bonaire by plane. The year before that there were just over 111 thousand. The number of tourists visiting the island was even almost ten percent higher than in 2019, when more than 157 thousand tourists flew to Bonaire.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, almost 47 thousand tourists came to Bonaire by air, about seven percent more than in the same quarter the year before. Never before have so many tourists visited Bonaire by plane as in the last quarter of last year.

Dutch nationality

The share of tourists with Dutch nationality who came to Bonaire by plane fell from 71 percent in 2021 to 64 percent a year later. The number of tourists with Dutch nationality did increase; from about 79 thousand to 111 thousand. According to Statistics Netherlands, the fact that the share fell is related to an increase in the number of visitors from the United States.

Some of the tourists with Dutch nationality live in Aruba, Sint Maarten and Curaçao. In 2022, ten percent of the incoming tourists who flew to Bonaire came from these islands. In the previous year, this share was 15 percent.

The number of tourists from Aruba, Sint Maarten or Curaçao increased by almost four percent to more than 17 thousand in the past year.