Tourism is the largest source of foreign exchange to Saint Lucia and has a substantial direct
and indirect impact on economic activity. Consequently, identifying what drives the demand
for the Saint Lucian product is crucial in assessing future sector performance. More
specifically, a robust understanding of the determinants of tourism demand to St. Lucia can
ensure consistency with marketing regimes and provide avenues for industry stakeholders to
remain competitive and achieve a sustainable sector. This piece therefore intends to model
tourist arrivals, by main source market, in an econometric VAR. The VAR estimated results
generated indicated that the income variables explained more of the variation in US stay-over
arrivals, whereas the price variables were found to better explain the disparity in the levels of
UK and Canadian stay-over arrivals to Saint Lucia.