As Hurricane Melissa brought high winds and drenching rain to Jamaica and threatened other Caribbean islands on Tuesday, travel industry leaders and officials scrambled to move visitors in some of the region’s most popular vacation destinations out of harm’s way.
It was unclear just how many visitors were affected by the hurricane. Officials in Jamaica said that as of Tuesday, there were 25,000 tourists in the country.
Airports in Jamaica were closed and all flights were canceled on Tuesday as the island took a direct hit. Flights passing over the region were rerouted away from the storm.
Major tourist destinations in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos seemed likely to dodge the worst of the hurricane, and the airports in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos, and Nassau, the Bahamas, were open on Tuesday. The hurricane’s eye is projected to pass between Nassau and the Turks and Caicos on Wednesday.
Delta Air Lines and JetBlue said they were waiving change fees for passengers scheduled to travel to or from Providenciales, and Kingston and Montego Bay, Jamaica. Air Canada said it added an extra flight to Jamaica over the weekend and substituted a larger aircraft to bring around 600 people back to Canada ahead of the hurricane.
Airport authorities in Nassau and Providenciales did not immediately respond to requests for comment on their plans for the storm.
A handful of flights at airports in eastern Cuba, including from Miami and Toronto, were canceled on Tuesday and Wednesday in anticipation of the storm’s arrival, according to FlightRadar24. But José Martí International Airport in Havana, the nation’s main international airport, was outside the path of the hurricane and operating as normal.
The storm was projected to strike some of the Bahamas’ central islands by Wednesday evening, but remain east of the islands most popular with tourists, including Grand Bahama and Paradise Island.
Cruise operators aimed to skirt the path of the storm by replacing stops in the eastern Caribbean with calls to ports further west. Carnival Cruise Lines, which had six sailings scheduled in the area, replaced stops in such destinations as the Turks and Caicos, the Dominican Republic and the Cayman Islands with visits to places like Honduras, Belize and Mexico. MSC Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line also changed itineraries of one ship each to avoid the storm.
Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, one of the largest cruise ships in the world, with a capacity of 7,600 passengers, rerouted from St. Maarten to Mexico and Honduras. Even the cruise line’s Odyssey of the Seas, a trans-Atlantic trip that departed Rome on Oct. 22, was affected: It skipped a stop in the Azores in favor one in the Canary Islands because the path gave a wider berth to Hurricane Melissa.
The U.S. State Department encouraged Americans in the path of the hurricane to sign up for the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, which allows officials to quickly provide information during an emergency.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Frances Robles contributed reporting.
Gabe Castro-Root is a travel reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
Claire Fahy reports on New York City and the surrounding area for The Times.
The post Hurricane Melissa Snarls Travel Across the Caribbean appeared first on New York Times.
