Cayman Islands Tourism Minister Shares Exclusive Details Behind the Island’s Airport Plans

Owen Roberts International Airport in Cayman Islands is in the midst of a more than $400 million makeover that will aim to attract more carriers from the European and Asian markets, said Kenneth Bryan, tourism minister for the Cayman Islands.

“When I became minister it was in the middle of COVID and the previous administration had just got through doing some renovations a couple of years before, and we were obligated to do an Airport Development Plan once every six or seven years just to make sure we are keeping up with the growth of our tourism product,” Bryan told Travel Market Report.

“Even though we have just done some renovations to the airport and it looks amazing, we fortunately had the good luck to say, ’It’s still not enough [to accommodate the growth in Cayman’s tourism product].’”

The overall development plan is estimated to be about half a billion dollars and that’s for the structure of the main airport and the parking areas of the airport. 

“But because we can’t do the overall expansion at once, we only took on sections of the expansion at this point,” said Bryan. “So, the sections we took on is airport extension, general aviation for private planes, surveillance systems, and tweaks at runways at the destinations sister island airport in Cayman Brac.”

Currently, the destination is in the middle of working on a $76 million project to upgrade the general aviation area of the airport that accommodates private planes for high-end clients. Construction on that phase has yet to commence, but will start soon, said Bryan. 

Cayman Islands government officials have approved the $76 million, large-scale airport redevelopment plan to lengthen the runway, modernize the air traffic control system and build a new terminal facility at Grand Cayman’s Owen Roberts International Airport (ORIA).

“So, once that plan was done, we had to look at our financial situation and decide what can we do now,” said Bryan. “We decided to focus on things that are top priority on the basis of our growth for tourism and also what can generate income to pay for these expansions that I just spoke about. 

“So, we focused on top priorities of concerns from a safety perspective and a revenue perspective,” he continued. “So, there are four main areas we are focusing on. One has to do with the airport surveillance systems, to be able to connect with planes when they are coming in, so we are going to upgrade that.”

Two ways Bryan said the money is being raised is by adding a development fee of $15 that will be introduced in the construction phase and that will go from 2024 to 2029, and also increasing its passenger terminal fee from $1 to $5. That will give the destination a margin of $19 to work on these upgrades. 

“We think that this will put us in a great position to expand to further markets further away,” he said. “We can tap into the European and Asian markets.

“We expect two other airlines to jump on as soon as the airport extension is done,” he continued. “A long time, we were having discussions with Virgin Atlantic and the airstrip, the width and the length, was the biggest hurdle. I’m certain once the airstrip is completed, we will get them back on board.”

Bryan would not reveal the second airline that was interested, but expressed a desire to secure Qatar Airlines and Emirates.