Above: Aruba

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Tourism to Aruba is booming so far in 2015, according to new data from the Caribbean Tourism Organization.

The Dutch Caribbean island received 294,411 stopover tourist arrivals in the first quarter of 2015, which represented a 20.1 percent increase over the same period in 2014.

While first-quarter eporting is not complete for the entire region, the 20.2 percent number is significantly higher than most of the region’s destinations so far in 2015.

The boom is due in large part to tourism from outside the US, Canada and Europe, with a 68.5 percent increase in arrivals from areas outside of those three major markets — in large part from South America.

Indeed, the 20.2 percent improvement came as the island saw a 12.2 percent reduction in tourism from Europe.

Last year, Aruba welcomed 1.07 million tourists, a 9.5 percent improvement on the previous year.