Montego Bay’s Sangster International Airport (MBJ) is set to welcome nine additional weekly flights during the 2014-2015 cruise season, as UK-headquartered Thomson Cruises stations one of its four vessels at Montego Bay’s north coast port.

Panama’s Tourism Authority (ATP is the Spanish acronym) has announced that the new 2014-2015 cruise season is going to tee off in October, with the arrival of such vessels as the Monarch, Vision of the Seas, Grandeur of the Seas, Coral Princess and Regatta.

The announcement came from CEO of the Tourism Authority Colin C James and Cruise Association President Nathan Dundas who are attending the Seatrade Europe conference in Spain.

Belize received 527,037 cruise passengers in the first half of 2014, according to data released by the Caribbean Tourism Organization. That represented a 36.9 percent increase over the first six months of 2013, according to CTO data. The next-highest increase was that of Cozumel, which saw a 19.4 percent increase in the same period.

A new deep water port is set to be built in East Caicos allowing a second point of access for cruise ships in the TCI. Cash will go towards construction of the facility - details of which have yet to be finalized.

After having welcomed in 2013, 643,634 cruise passengers on the North Coast an increase of 5.5 percent over 2012, according to data from the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), Haiti reported growth of 6.3 percent in the first half of 2014.