A weekend full of sports in Cayman Brac assembled hundreds of people, which was widely considered by tourism minister Hon. Moses Kirkconnell to be the Brac’s most successful weekend since the COVID-19 lockdown in March.
While it is evident that Cayman Brac economy has been fueled recently by vacationing travelers from Grand Cayman; an extra boost came through the 16th-19th of October, thanks to a football league match and an annual swim meet.
The Cayman Island Football Association held a Men’s Division 1 league match on the 17th, which featured Cayman Brac FC picking up a 3-0 victory over Elite SC. Besides Elite’s starting 11, substitutes, family, friends, referees and team officials also traveled from Grand Cayman.
However, it was the 23rd Annual Mike Lockwood Memorial Swim (MLM) Meet that forced Kirkconnell to book additional flights for that weekend.
According to a press release, Kirkconnell noted that; Cayman Airways added multiple flights to Cayman Brac for athletes and their families. The national airline flew three jets to the Brac on Friday (16 October) and one on Saturday (17 October), whereas on a typical weekend there is only one flight.
Cay 03 Sports (C3S) reached out to several hotels in the Brac along with rental car accommodations, which all confirmed during that weekend everything was fully booked.
According to the press release, the MLM swim meet was used for government’s strategy to increase sports tourism on Cayman Brac, and also accords with the government’s COVID-19 response to encourage tourism generally to the Sister Islands.
“The exposure of Cayman Brac to a diversify clientele from Cayman, because Cayman is multinational, with 112 different nationalities represented and whether it’s Covid or whatever; the idea of being able to host really quality events like this just continues to make Cayman Brac move in the right direction,” said Kirkconnell during a C3S interview.
He said while sports is the reason behind Cayman Brac’s recent traffic, he encourages visitors to explore the opportunities of the island once there.
“They are all looking around, they are all enjoying the end of the bluff and we also have other strong components from the heritage aspect of it, or cultural aspect and we have tours for that.”
In addition, the Minister of Sports, the Hon. Juliana O’Connor-Connolly is working with Kirkconnell to also accommodate international and regional sport tourism within Cayman Brac.
“We held the highest rating CONCACAF tournaments,” said Kirkconnell. “We have welcome teams from all over the world to play here and the vision was that we would continue to develop the sports tourism aspect of this complex.”
Cay 3 Sports 