Above: St Lucia (CJ Photo)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

St Lucia’s tourism sector is off to a very strong start in 2015, according to the government.

The destination saw a 14 percent improvement in arrivals in January, with a total of 31,541 visitors. That was the largest number of stayover visitors in January in the island’s history, besting January 2005.

St Lucia Tourism Director Louis Lewis said the growth was part of a strategy to ramp up arrivals from the North American market.

“We are reaching out to the north American market via our innovative summer campaign ‘Saint Lucia Rocks this Summer,’ which offers exciting deals from scores of industry partners,” Lewis said.

Last year, St Lucia set a record for the island with a total of 338,158 visitors arrivals, up 6 percent over 2013.