By NAN Staff Writer
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Weds. Feb. 17, 2016: The Spanish Caribbean island of Cuba led with double digit growth in 2015, according to the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s (CTO), latest tourist arrival data released Tuesday.
While Cuba fell behind the Dominican Republic in actual visitor stop overs for 2015, the communist nation managed to pull off the biggest spike of the year. Cuba saw double digit growth with a whopping 17.4 percent surge over nations in the region.
This translated to over 3.2 million visitors in 2015, with the most arrivals in March of last year. Cuba was second overall in the Caribbean to the Dominican Republic, which continued to lead with arrivals number of over 5.5 million last year but only an 8.9 percent growth.
Also experiencing a good year were Aruba, Barbados and Haiti. Both Barbados and Aruba saw arrivals increase by 15 percent over 2014 while Haiti saw a spike by 11 percent. Over 1.1 million tourists visited Aruba between January and November 2015 while just over half-million visited Barbados for the same period. Haiti saw over half-million visitors also for the 12 months of last year.
The third best performer for 2015 was Jamaica, which saw over 2.1 million stop over visitors last year. Bahamas and Puerto Rico were a distant fourth and fifth, respectively, with over 1.2 million tourists.
Here are the arrival numbers for the other destinations as released by the CTO:
 Country                     Period            Stop Over Visitors     Â
Anguilla                          Jan. –Dec. 2015             73,232
Antigua & Barbuda              Jan-Nov. 2015              222,123
Belize                           Jan. –Dec. 2015             341,124
Bermuda                       Jan-Nov. 2015               208,737
British Virgin Islands           Jan. –Dec. 2015            393,018
Cayman Islands                Jan. –Dec. 2015            385,379
Curacao                       Jan. –Dec. 2015             468,442
Dominica                     Jan. – July. 2015             48,154
Grenada                       Jan-Sept. 2015              107,183
Guyana                       Jan. –Dec. 2015             206,819
Martinique                    Jan. –Dec. 2015            487,364
Montserrat                   Jan-Nov. 2015              7,078
Saint Lucia                   Jan. –Dec. 2015            344,908
St. Kitts & Nevis                  Jan-May, 2015           52,294
St. Vincent & the Grenadines     Jan-Nov. 2015           65,014
Suriname                         Jan-Aug. 2015          166,246
Trinidad & Tobago               Jan. –Dec. 2015         439,749
Turks & Caicos Islands          Jan. –Dec. 2015               298,960
U S Virgin Islands               Jan. –Dec. 2015          769,058
