The Saint Lucia Tourist Board has launched yet another innovative and exciting campaign, building on the tremendous success over the years of the Staycation program that has allowed Saint Lucian nationals to play and stay at world renowned on-island hotels and resorts at exceptionally-discounted prices. The new regional campaign will extend to include Caribbean consumers.

Aruba received 489,871 tourist stopover arrivals in the first six months of 2014, according to new data from the Caribbean Tourism Organization. That represented a 5.3 percent improvement over the first half of 2013, according to the CTO. The number was buoyed by a particularly strong summer period.

Mayflower Tours recently announced its People to People Travel program to Cuba. With a license granted to Mayflower Tours by the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, Mayflower Tours will operate its first departure in early 2015.

John and Mary Stachnik, co-owners of Mayflower Tours in Downers Grove, IL recently visited Cuba. Mayflower Tours will commence a series of People to People departures visiting Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Havana and much of the countryside on a nine-day program.

Canada continues to be the primary source of visitors to Cuba, according to a report by the National Statistics and Information Office (ONE), cited by the Cuban business magazine Opciones. Over 181,260 Canadians visited the island up to June, lower than in same period last year.

Tourism to Grenada is surging, according to new data from the Caribbean Tourism Organization. Tourism stopover arrivals to the island increased by 18.6 percent in the first half of 2014, compared to the first six months of 2013, according to the CTO data.