Above: St John (CJ Photo)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

A strong summer season boosted tourism numbers for the United States Virgin Islands, according to data from the Caribbean Tourism Organization.

After a sluggish winter tourist season, the US territory saw a 7.6 percent increase in the summer months, compared to the same period in 2013.

That followed a winter season that saw a 0.9 percent decrease compared to the previous year, according to the CTO data.

For the first three quarters of 2014, a total of 561,946 stopover tourists have visited the US Virgin Islands, a 3.1 percent increase over the first nine months of 2014.

In the same period, the USVI welcomed 1.472 million cruise visitors, a 4 percent improvement over the same period in 2013.