Is Middle East uncertainty driving Caribbean growth?

It is a question I have been asked more and more this year, by clients, by candidates, and lately by contractors watching events in the Gulf. Since February, the assumption in parts of our industry has been that capital and demand pushed out of the Middle East must be washing up somewhere, and that the Caribbean is the somewhere.

Having spent over a decade recruiting senior construction and property professionals into this region, I think the question deserves a proper answer rather than a soundbite. So let me lay out what is actually happening, on both sides of the Atlantic, and save the verdict for the end.

What is happening in the Gulf

First, the case for the Middle East effect, because the evidence is on the record.

Melia's chief executive told shareholders in May that conflict in the region is pushing summer demand toward Spain, southern Europe and the Caribbean, describing them as "safe-haven destinations".¹ Hotel investment advisers at CBRE, Jefferies and Moelis made the same point about capital at the industry's Berlin forum in April: money follows stability.²

Some of the movement is physical. MSC has redeployed its flagship, World Europa, from the Gulf to the Caribbean for the 2026 to 2027 season.³ UK searches for Caribbean holidays jumped 81 per cent in early March as travellers rebooked away from the region.⁴

And on the supply side, Saudi Arabia has pulled back several of its giga-projects, with work on The Line halted until after 2030 and major Red Sea resort schemes deferred.⁵ Gulf construction contract awards fell 58 per cent year on year in mid-2025.⁶ That releases contractors, consultants and capital that had been committed to Gulf hospitality for the rest of the decade.

So there is something in the question. But before deciding how much, it is worth asking a more basic one.

Is the Caribbean actually growing?

Yes, and it was growing long before anyone was rerouting a holiday.

The region recorded around 34 million stay-over arrivals in 2024, its best year yet and comfortably above pre-pandemic levels.⁷ In 2025 it did it again, reaching roughly 35 million, a third consecutive high, with every single month beating its 2019 equivalent.⁸ Cruise is stronger still: around 35.5 million cruise visits in 2025, more than the region has ever seen, and the cruise lines are responding by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into new private destinations across the Bahamas and beyond.⁹

The money is following the demand. Foreign direct investment into the Caribbean is projected at around US$16 billion in 2026, up from under US$5 billion at the pandemic low. In the most recent Caribbean hospitality financing survey, more banks than ever reported rising resort deal activity, and Caribbean lending has grown to more than a third of their portfolios.¹⁰

And then there is the build itself. Industry bodies count close to 30,000 rooms across the region in planning, award or construction for the period to 2028, with roughly 150 hotels under development at the last full count.¹¹

One more point on timing, because it matters for the question in the title: almost all of that pipeline was financed before February this year.

Watch what the brands are doing

If you want to judge a market, ignore the headlines and watch where operators put their own money.

Start with the incumbent. Sandals Resorts has been in the Caribbean for over forty years and knows this market better than anyone. It is making significant investment in its home market of Jamaica this year,¹² alongside an expansion programme that will roughly double the footprint of its Beaches brand,¹³ including what has been described as the largest single tourism investment in St Vincent's history.¹⁴ Operators with that depth of local knowledge do not commit to that kind of programme to mop up displaced demand. They do it because they believe in the next twenty years.

Now look at who is arriving. Pendry topped off its first Caribbean resort, in Barbados, in April.¹⁵ Kempinski has broken ground on its first Turks and Caicos development.¹⁶ Mandarin Oriental's first new-build resort in the region is under way in Grand Cayman.¹⁷ Bvlgari and Anantara have both announced Caribbean debuts.¹⁸ Hilton has said publicly that it wants to nearly double its portfolio of around fifty Caribbean properties.¹⁹

The region's longest-established operator is reinvesting at home at the very moment the world's luxury houses are arriving for the first time. These are the people with the best information in the industry, and they have all reached the same conclusion.

Three projects that show the scale

A few examples, all publicly announced, that give a sense of what is actually being built.

Three islands, three segments, one direction. And these are illustrations, not the list. Our project radar at Thatcher Associates is tracking a pipeline of comparable schemes across the Bahamas, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Antigua, Anguilla, Saint Lucia and beyond, most of them opening between 2027 and 2029.

If you are involved in construction or resort operations

Projects like these need two waves of talent. The construction wave is under way now: project directors and managers, quantity surveyors and commercial managers, site and construction leadership, MEP and structural engineers, and marine specialists for the marina schemes. Notably, several major projects have not yet named their main contractor, which tells you how much delivery capacity is still to be assembled.

The second wave comes 12 to 24 months before each opening: directors of engineering, chief engineers, facilities and capital projects leadership, the people who take a resort from practical completion to welcoming its first guests. With so many openings clustered between 2027 and 2029, dozens of these senior roles will land in the same window, across island labour markets that simply do not hold that depth of experience locally. You do not need a statistic to see the shortage coming. The arithmetic of the pipeline is enough.

Get on Thatcher Associates' radar

If a move to the region in the coming years interests you, now is the time to be visible, not when the roles are announced.

I will be straight with you: if you share your CV today, we may not have the perfect role for you this week. That is not the point. The point is that when a project director role in Barbados or a chief engineer position in the Bahamas lands on my desk in eight months, the people we call first are the ones we already know.

So if the next chapter of your career could be in the Caribbean:

• Introduce yourself and get on our radar
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Follow Thatcher Associates on LinkedIn for project and market updates as this pipeline unfolds

So, is the Middle East driving it?

A bit. The tailwind is real and you can measure it at the margins: one major operator has said it out loud, one flagship cruise ship has physically moved, holiday searches spiked, and the Gulf pullback is freeing money and expertise that will need somewhere to go.

But the pipeline above was funded before the conflict escalated, arrivals were breaking records for two years before it, and the investors themselves put the region's strength down to fundamentals rather than geopolitics. The Middle East did not light this fire. It is fanning one that was already burning, and whichever way events in the Gulf go from here, the Caribbean's next three years are already financed and under construction.

The busiest years of this cycle arrive between 2027 and 2029. The time to be on the radar is now.