Caribbean Mostly Under Level 4 Advisories, But Travelers Are Going Anyway

As it’s officially autumn and there’s once again a chill in the air, snowbirds are surely beginning to think about heading south for the winter. Even those of us who live in milder climates could use a tropical getaway after enduring 19 months of pandemic banality.

The Caribbean typically sees throngs of North Americans looking to escape their icy environs in the winter season, though the region, which is home to more than two dozen destinations, is an equally popular spring and summer retreat.

But, amid COVID-19, things can get a bit complicated for travelers dreaming of an island vacation, since much of the Caribbean, like plenty of other nations on the planet, continues to battle the current Delta variant surge. And, while everyone in the U.S. is able to get vaccinated when they choose, this region is struggling with insufficient access to vaccines, according to The Washington Post.

Due to ‘very high’ COVID-19 case rates, the U.S. Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention (CDC) has slapped a ‘Level 4: COVID-19 Very High’ advisory on the majority of Caribbean tourism destinations, which carries a recommendation that the public avoid traveling there altogether.

Currently in this category are over 20 tourism destinations, including Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Saint Martin, Sint Maarten, U.S. Virgin Islands. If we begin looking at continental destinations that line the Caribbean Sea, it becomes an even higher number.

One level down, there’s the ‘Level 3: COVID-19 High’ warning, which recommends that travelers be fully vaccinated before traveling to these destinations. Anguilla, Bonaire, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos currently carry this label, while the Dominican Republic and the Cayman Islands are the two to carry lower-level advisories.

“Caribbean travel was the first to see a resurgence in early 2021 and, while most destinations continue to maintain a Level 4 status with the CDC, it hasn’t kept travelers away,” travel adviser Mike Salvadore of 58 Stars Travel told the Post. He observed that interest in the region declined slightly during hurricane season and just after Europe reopened, but interest in the Caribbean for fall and holiday travel is “robust”.

The CDC’s high-level travel advisories don’t seem to be dampening people’s enthusiasm for visiting the region. For instance, the Bahamas saw an almost 50 percent higher visitation number through August than it did last year. I. Chester Cooper, the Bahamian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Tourism, Investments and Aviation, said in an emailed statement that his country is optimistic that it will also see a “robust holiday season”.

Of course, things still aren’t what they were in pre-pandemic times, as international travel is only beginning to rebound. Neil Walters, acting Secretary General of the Caribbean Tourism Organization told the Post that the Caribbean’s overall international tourist arrivals during the first half of 2021 reached 6.6 million, down 12 percent from the first half of last year (in fairness, travel didn’t shut down until mid-March of 2020). That’s also a decrease of 62 percent from the same period in 2019.

The CDC’s travel advisories can, however, be a source of frustration for Caribbean officials and stakeholders. Vanessa Ledesma, Acting CEO and Director General of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), said in September that the sector has worked hard to protect tourists and workers alike. “We have gone to great lengths to produce the safest possible corridors in our tourism-related communities,” she said. “Caribbean travel is safe and continues to get safer.”

Ledesma also said she feels that travel warnings based on COVID-19 positivity levels can be misleading. Clive Landis, who chairs the University of the West Indies’ COVID-19 task force in Barbados, is also skeptical of their value, especially when the warnings are applied to countries that have low overall case rates, such as Anguilla.

“I think here in the Caribbean, our record—even now with the surge of the Delta variant—is still, in terms of cases per capita…well below the U.S.,” Landis said. “It’s not as if they’re stepping into some kind of a hot spot that they’re not used to in their own country.”

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