We've been calling for them for months and the tourism numbers for July through to September have finally been posted on the BTB's performance dashboard. And they aren't great.
The numbers show that overnight tourist arrivals to Belize fell by 8.4 percent between June and September 2026 compared to the same period last year, representing a loss of more than 12,400 visitors. The decline persisted across all four months, hitting its sharpest downturn in August with a nearly 13 percent drop in overnight traffic.
Today in Germany at the Routes World Trade show Jules Vasquez asked the Director of Tourism about it:
Jules Vasquez
"This year for tourism in Belize we've been having what you all call soft months, soft is the euphemism for a down turn in arrivals."
Evan Tillett, Director of Tourism
"Well I think that we are in very challenging times in terms of the tourism industry you will look at the WTO forecast at the beginning of the year there were forecasting a 3-4% growth that has now been turned dow to 1-2% by the end of the year. But we have a lot of geo political issues, you have the rising fuel prices, you have the fact that the air tickets went up but over 20% you have the issue of sargassum you have the issue of inflation there is election in the US economy which is our biggest source market and there is a tendency to what that happens there is softness in rear market."
"We're seeing positive signs in the high season so we think that there will be some catching up but we think that we will be close to last year numbers probably a little under."
Jules Vasquez
"Were you, are you concerned when you see months like August have a double digit downturn?"
Evan Tillett, Director of Tourism
"Of course every down turn we are definitely concerned about."
"We look at the data and we pivot in terms of putting in new campaigns putting in new resources working with the private sector to definitely try and mitigate those downturns so I think that we have done what we can and we will continue leave no stone unturned in order to get back the numbers for growth."
According to Tillett, other notable drivers of the decline in tourist arrivals are the world cup - and a sharp reduction in Belizeans coming home for September - likely driven by strict US Immigration policies which may have made it difficult for some of them to return to the US.
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