I visited Aruba in July for the 2nd straight year and will go back in August of next year. I read in a few posts lately that people thought the crowds were down from last year. Since most people had their vacations already booked i did not think the crowds would drop until fall season or beyond. I would be interested hearing if tourism is down slightly and do you think this will have an effect on hotel prices.

With Cancun, Playa, and Cozumel out of commission for a while, I am sure that the other Caribbean islands will absorb a lot of thier visitors. Aruba, being out of the hurricane belt, should have increased tourism.

I called my travel agent (who is very reliable and would not lie to me) to book a trip for June 2006 at the Bucuti and there was only 4 rooms avaiable for that time!

June is about 8 months away, and they are already filling up, as usual... all of this boycott non-sense is absurd.

-Courtney

Hi Tony,

We have been trying to find you out here since we met in July..glad to see you posting again. Hope all is well! Drop us a line and let us know how you are doing..did you become a grandpa yet?

My friends just got back from Aruba, they went in October, they said that nothing has really changed, they go every year at that time and said from what they could tell they could see no difference in the amount of people that were there. So i guess things that happened didn't really affect anything, but like you said it is going to be hard to tell if next year brings something different...I know airfares were down significantly from Neark, they got roundtrip airfare for $389.00..oh how I wished I had vacation time left I would have been there in a heartbeat.....

Listen, drop us a line.

Susan & Steve

Spoke with a travel agent yesterday- she said her bookings are UP 3% from last year at this time...she also said the "airlines" are worried...so there will probably be some playing around with the fares. We got our best price ever in 20 yrs...we leave 5/4 thru 5/22 and paid $350.00 ea. with USAIR and it includes the tax...another friend of mine got rd. trip for the same dates for $275.00 pp all inclusive..last yr. we paid $638.00 each.....so check around..this price was thru USAIR.com NOT USAIRWAYS.COM I don't know what the difference is in emails..but it worked for us!! Sorry Dr.Phil.

definately no drop in tourism, i've been going to aruba every year for 17 years and haven't seen any drop. don't forget you are making a big investment in your vacation and most of the time you get what you pay for!

Courtney,

The Bucuti always books up fast. I had to book in May 05 for December 3-10. Crazy!!

main travel operater from the uk have fully booked all of august...2nd year for us have noticed extra advertising in the uk..£3000 for 2 weeks at tam in august.

we just returned and the island overall tourism seemed down. bucuti is a small resort and a great place so it would be expected to be full but most of teh other resorts were not full

I find it interesing that there is very little intrest on this website ,with people listing ther timeshares. In the past i had many people email me back, the last few months have been slow.