2024 Year in Review: Hurricane Beryl, Tourism Records, Guyana’s Oil Rise and the 2025 Outlook

Publication Date: 3 January 2025  |  Coverage Period: 3 December 2024 – 2 January 2025

Morning Briefing

• The Caribbean Development Bank publishes its annual economic review for 2024, noting that the region delivered aggregate GDP growth of approximately 4.2% despite the significant disruption caused by Hurricane Beryl in the third quarter.
• Jamaica’s Ministry of Finance confirms the island’s fiscal surplus target for FY2023-24 was met, with the fiscal accounts performing ahead of IMF programme benchmarks for the seventh consecutive year.
• Guyana’s oil production averaged approximately 620,000 barrels per day in Q4 2024, according to the Guyana Energy Department, cementing the country’s status as the fastest-growing oil producer in the Western Hemisphere.
• The Caribbean Tourism Organization estimates that total tourist arrivals across the region in 2024 exceeded pre-pandemic 2019 levels for the first time, with stayover visitors up approximately 6% on 2023 figures.
• The Dominican Republic reports GDP growth of approximately 5.5% for 2024, maintaining its position as the fastest-growing major economy in the Caribbean basin for the fourth consecutive year.
• The IMF’s year-end Caribbean regional assessment notes that while Hurricane Beryl created significant near-term fiscal and reconstruction costs, the region’s economic fundamentals remain broadly sound heading into 2025.

2024 in Review: A Year Defined by Resilience and Disruption

The year 2024 will be remembered across the Caribbean as one of sharp contrasts: a year that opened with cautious optimism as tourism recovered, fiscal positions improved, and investment flows strengthened, only to be punctuated in early July by the arrival of Hurricane Beryl — the earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record — which tore through the Windward Islands, Barbados, and Jamaica with devastating force. The months that followed were defined by the region’s remarkable capacity to absorb the shock, rebuild, and press forward with the economic momentum that had been building since the pandemic years.

For property markets specifically, 2024 was a year of activity. Demand remained strong across most territories, underpinned by buoyant tourism revenues, record remittance flows, and — particularly in the second half of the year — the stimulative effect of central bank rate cuts that began filtering through to mortgage markets. Supply remained a persistent constraint in most markets, and the reconstruction imperative following Beryl added additional pressure to already-stretched construction sectors across affected territories. By year-end, property prices had generally held or risen across the region, even in the islands most directly struck by the hurricane.

The Caribbean entered 2025 with its economic identity subtly but unmistakably evolving. Guyana’s extraordinary oil wealth is reshaping the economic geography of the broader region, creating new investment flows, new migration patterns, and new dynamics in the Guyanese real estate market that are only beginning to be fully understood. The Dominican Republic continues its trajectory as a significant economic power within the Caribbean basin. And across the smaller island states, the tourism renaissance is creating a class of property investors — both local and foreign — who see Caribbean real estate as a compelling long-term asset class.

Hurricane Beryl: The Year’s Defining Event for Property and Insurance Markets

No single event shaped Caribbean property markets in 2024 more profoundly than Hurricane Beryl. Forming on 1 July and rapidly intensifying to Category 5 strength before making landfall in Carriacou, Grenada on the same day, Beryl left a trail of devastation across the Windward Islands, through St Vincent and the Grenadines, and into Barbados before tracking north to Jamaica. The physical destruction was severe: in Carriacou, estimates suggested that the majority of structures sustained significant damage. In St Vincent and Jamaica, the storm’s wind and rain caused substantial property and infrastructure losses.

The insurance market response to Beryl exposed both the strengths and gaps in Caribbean property insurance coverage. Insured losses were estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars across the region, with the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) making payouts to several governments within weeks of the storm — a demonstration of the facility’s parametric design working as intended. However, the proportion of private residential properties covered by adequate wind insurance in the most severely affected territories remained disturbingly low. Post-storm assessments confirmed that many homeowners in Carriacou and affected parts of Jamaica and St Vincent were substantially uninsured or underinsured, facing reconstruction costs without meaningful financial support.

The reconstruction following Beryl became, in its own way, a significant driver of economic activity in the second half of 2024. Construction materials, skilled tradespeople, and engineering services were all in high demand across affected islands, contributing to GDP activity even as the underlying productive capacity of storm-hit communities recovered. Caribbean governments received support from the CDB, the World Bank, and bilateral donors, and by year-end the visible signs of recovery in most affected areas were encouraging — though the deeper reconstruction of housing stock, particularly in Grenada’s outer islands, will extend well into 2025 and beyond.

Tourism: A Record-Breaking Year Despite Mid-Summer Disruption

For the Caribbean tourism industry, 2024 was a year of genuine records. The Caribbean Tourism Organization’s year-end data confirm that the region surpassed 2019 stayover visitor levels for the first time since the pandemic, with particularly strong performance from Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and Barbados. Cruise arrivals also reached new highs, with the expansion of port facilities across multiple territories enabling the accommodation of the new generation of mega-vessels that the major cruise lines are deploying.

The tourism performance was all the more impressive given that Hurricane Beryl disrupted the early July period — traditionally the peak of the summer season — in several key destinations. Jamaica’s tourism authorities reported a temporary but significant dip in arrivals in the weeks immediately following Beryl, as some visitors cancelled or rescheduled. However, the recovery was swift, and the broader 2024 season performed ahead of expectations. Industry data suggest that the Caribbean’s growing profile as a year-round destination — rather than solely a winter sun market — helped cushion the seasonal impact of the storm.

Tourism’s property market implications were felt throughout 2024. Short-term rental platforms reported continued growth in Caribbean listings and occupancy rates, with Jamaica and Barbados among the standout performers. New hotel development accelerated across the region, with the Dominican Republic’s Las Americas corridor, Jamaica’s north coast, and several Eastern Caribbean islands all seeing significant pipeline activity. The intersection of tourism growth and property investment has never been tighter, and heading into 2025 the two sectors appear mutually reinforcing in ways that provide a structural underpinning to Caribbean real estate values.

Guyana’s Oil Economy: Reshaping Caribbean Geopolitics and Investment

Guyana’s emergence as a major oil producer continued to accelerate through 2024, with output from the Stabroek Block operations led by ExxonMobil, Hess, and CNOOC growing steadily to reach approximately 620,000 barrels per day by year-end. This extraordinary production trajectory — from zero offshore oil production before 2019 to one of the world’s fastest-growing oil economies in just five years — has profound implications that extend well beyond Guyana itself.

Within Guyana, the oil wealth is visibly transforming Georgetown’s real estate market. Demand for commercial office space, upscale residential property, and international hotel accommodation has surged, driven by the influx of oil industry workers, contractors, and professionals from around the world. Property prices in Georgetown and East Bank Demerara have risen sharply, creating affordability challenges for ordinary Guyanese citizens even as the national treasury overflows with oil revenues. The government’s ability to translate that revenue into improved housing, infrastructure, and public services for all Guyanese remains the central domestic political challenge of the oil era.

For the broader Caribbean, Guyana’s oil wealth creates both opportunities and competitive dynamics. The CARICOM bloc has been navigating questions about energy pricing, regional solidarity, and how Guyana’s newfound wealth should be shared or invested regionally. Energy investment in Guyana also draws contractor expertise, capital, and attention that might otherwise flow to other Caribbean territories. Nevertheless, the ripple effects of a wealthy Guyana — increased trade, tourism flows, and investment capital circulating within the CARICOM sphere — represent a net positive for the regional economic ecosystem.

The 2025 Economic Outlook for Caribbean Property

Entering 2025, the Caribbean economic outlook is cautiously optimistic. The IMF projects aggregate Caribbean growth of approximately 3.5-4.0% for 2025, modestly lower than 2024’s outturn but still respectable by global standards. Several factors support this positive baseline: the tourism recovery remains intact; Guyana’s oil production will continue to grow; the DR’s economic engine shows no signs of stalling; and the gradual easing of interest rates globally is beginning to support domestic demand in rate-sensitive sectors including housing.

For Caribbean property markets specifically, the year ahead appears constructive. Demand drivers — diaspora purchasing, tourism-linked short-term rental investment, lifestyle migration from high-cost Northern markets — all remain structurally intact. Financing conditions are improving as central banks ease. And the reconstruction activity following Beryl is adding to, rather than subtracting from, near-term construction sector demand. The primary risks on the horizon are external: a sharper-than-expected US economic slowdown would dampen both tourism arrivals and remittance flows; a renewed global inflationary episode could force rate reversals; and another active hurricane season in 2025 — which NOAA forecasts suggest remains a meaningful possibility — could again test the region’s resilience.

Caribbean Leaders This Month

Economic Growth Leader of 2024: The Dominican Republic takes this title for the fourth consecutive year, with approximately 5.5% GDP growth in 2024 achieved despite regional hurricane disruption and a challenging global environment.

Most Dramatic Economic Transformation: Guyana, whose oil-driven GDP growth is remaking the country’s economic identity at a pace that has no precedent in Caribbean economic history.

Best Fiscal Performance: Jamaica, which for the seventh consecutive year met or exceeded its IMF programme fiscal targets, cementing the island’s reputation as the Caribbean’s most disciplined fiscal reformer.

Tourism Recovery Champion: Jamaica again earns recognition for a standout tourism year that saw visitor arrivals and spending set new records despite the disruption of Hurricane Beryl in early July.

Most Resilient Post-Beryl Recovery: Carriacou, Grenada, which sustained the most severe direct damage from Hurricane Beryl but whose community-led recovery and government support have enabled meaningful rebuilding to begin within months of the storm.

Property Market of the Year: Barbados, where a combination of luxury demand, digital nomad immigration, and a diversifying economy sustained strong property price growth through 2024, even as the island community grapples with the affordability implications for local residents.

Overall Caribbean Economic Performer of 2024: The Dominican Republic earns the top regional honour for its consistent, diversified growth performance, sound macroeconomic management, and position as the largest and fastest-growing economy in the Caribbean basin.

Looking Ahead

As the Caribbean enters 2025, the region carries forward both the lessons and the momentum of an eventful 2024. The hurricane risk is not going away — indeed, climate scientists project that rising sea surface temperatures will continue to intensify Atlantic storm activity, making years like 2024 potentially more frequent than historically typical. This reality places Caribbean property insurance, disaster-resilient construction standards, and emergency financing frameworks at the centre of regional economic planning in ways that were not fully internalised a decade ago. For property investors and homeowners alike, the insurance question is no longer peripheral but central to the calculus of Caribbean real estate ownership.

The investment opportunity in Caribbean real estate entering 2025 remains compelling for those who approach it with appropriate diligence. Improving financing conditions, structural tourism demand, strong diaspora interest, and Guyana’s transformative oil wealth all create tailwinds for property markets across the region. The key discipline for investors is differentiating between markets — understanding which territories have the insurance frameworks, regulatory environments, and economic fundamentals to sustain value over time, and which face greater structural vulnerability to the climate and economic risks that are inherent in small island development.

2025 begins with the Caribbean more interconnected with global capital markets, more visible to international investors, and more resilient in its fundamentals than at perhaps any previous point in the region’s modern economic history. The Beryl experience showed that the Caribbean can absorb a major shock and come back. The tourism data show that the world wants what the Caribbean offers. And the fiscal discipline demonstrated by Jamaica and others shows that responsible governance is delivering results. The year ahead will bring its own tests, but the foundation for Caribbean growth — and Caribbean property market performance — has rarely looked more solid.

The Caribbean Property & Investment Review is published monthly and covers developments during the preceding calendar month. All factual statements reflect information publicly available at the time of publication.