The sounds of merengue. The taste of artisanal rum. The sooth of a steel pan. It’s the largest cruise event in the world – and the world’s largest cruise destination made a big showing. 

This week’s Seatrade Cruise Global conference saw significant participation from the Caribbean, with a number of top destinations showing up in Miami Beach to put their best face forward. 

That included impressive displays from countries like Barbados, St Kitts, The Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Antigua and Barbuda and the US Virgin Islands (the latter including some very entertaining Moko Jumbies for good measure). 

Other Caribbean booths with strong showings included Martinique, St Maarten and the Dominican Republic, with the latter hosting a very colorful, music-focused display replete with living statues and, of course, a merengue demonstration. 

And Puerto Rico was back with its always-stocked rum bar, a crowd favorite that included some of the island’s newest rum expressions like Capo and other new debuts from Rums of Puerto Rico. 

Cruise tourism to the Caribbean surged again last year, with nearly 36 million passengers making their way to the region on cruise ships, the vast majority out of southern ports like Miami, Port Canaveral and Port Everglades in Florida. 

The most popular cruise port in the Caribbean? The Port of Nassau, which remains the global leader.

That’s along with a growing number of home-porting operations across the region, particularly in eastern Caribbean ports like St Kitts, Martinique and Antigua.