Kralendijk (February 26th, 2018) – Tourism Corporation Bonaire (TCB) hereby would like to inform the results for the airlift performance of 2017. Data was retrieved from Bonaire International Airport and analysed.

Europe continues to lead the market performance with a 21.2% growth in 2017. KLM had a strong growth of 27.2% year over year.  This is a result of an extra seasonal winter flight that started in November and was planned to run until March. KLM extended this extra flight and will now fly until October 2018 (via Aruba). This is extra seat capacity for Bonaire and will again result in positive results for 2018.

Tour Operator Corendon who started selling 100 seats on KLM November 2017, has also informed that as per March 2018 they will increase the seats from 100 to 130 seats per week. As for TUI airlines, they had a 10.8% growth and informed to have experienced a 15% growth in package sales.

North America enjoyed a growth of 3.8% in 2017 of which Delta Air Lines had a strong year with an 8.2% growth. United Airlines Newark Flights did not have the fall flight which was 11 weeks however the flight picked up well in the winter. The Houston flight had a 9% growth and the flight remained throughout 2017.

The Domestic numbers were driven by Insel Air, this was down 31.5% year-over-year. Which affected the overall arrival numbers of 2017.

The total Bonaire 2017 arrivals was about 157,389. The total arrivals provided us insight in the 2017 performance and TCB will await the final report from the Central Bureau of Statistics.