A number can be true and still mislead an entire organization. A working scorecard tends to create this exact risk while it looks like it is managing one. The moment a number gets attached to funding, a bonus, or a minister's political standing, the question in the room quietly changes. It stops being "did we achieve the objective" and becomes "how do we move the number." Both questions can be answered by hardworking, honest people. Only one of them produces the outcome the organization exists to deliver.
The mechanism
The chain runs the same way every time: objective, proxy, incentive, optimization, distorted outcome. An organization picks a proxy because the real objective is hard to measure directly. Visitor arrivals stand in for economic contribution. Cost per acquisition stands in for marketing effectiveness. A sustainability participation rate stands in for actual environmental improvement. None of that is a mistake on its own. Proxies are necessary. Nobody can measure "economic contribution" directly on a weekly dashboard.
The turn happens at the incentive step. Once someone's budget, bonus, or political survival depends on the proxy, the proxy becomes the thing being managed. This is Goodhart's Law, named for the economist Charles Goodhart: once a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Nobody has to act in bad faith for this to happen. A team doing exactly what it is rewarded for doing will produce exactly this result.
The dangerous point is the incentive attached to the proxy. That is where "did we achieve the objective" quietly turns into "how do we move the number."
A record year, on paper
The Caribbean Tourism Organization confirmed that regional stay-over arrivals reached an estimated 35 million in 2025, up 2.5 percent year on year and the third consecutive year above pre-pandemic 2019 levels. Every single month of 2025 outperformed its 2019 equivalent. By the measure the industry leads with, arrivals, this was a record season, and the reporting treated it as one.
The CHTA-Amadeus 2026 Caribbean Travel Trends Report, released at the Caribbean Travel Forum in Antigua, showed underlying overseas demand grew just 1 percent year on year between April 2025 and March 2026. That is a sharp deceleration from 21 percent and 8 percent growth in the two prior years. The headline arrivals figure was accurate while the demand driving it had nearly stalled.
At the Caribbean Travel Marketplace 2026 in Antigua, Jamaica's Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett disclosed that the Caribbean retains only 15 to 20 cents of every tourism dollar spent in the region, the lowest retention rate in the world. He compared it directly to India, at roughly 60 percent, and the Dominican Republic, at roughly 50 percent. This was not a new finding presented as breaking news. Bartlett had cited a version of the same figure years earlier. The gap between arrivals and retention had been sitting there the entire time, underneath a metric that kept saying the season was strong.
Three real numbers from three named sources, describing the same season. Arrivals: a record. Demand: nearly flat. Retention: the lowest in the world, unmoved for years. None of this required an underperforming destination or a dishonest report. It required only that the industry's headline metric, arrivals, was never built to show the other two.
Why the arrival number specifically is easy to move
A destination organization under pressure to grow arrivals has several ways to do it that do not require growing the thing arrivals is supposed to represent. Visitors who stay fewer nights instead of more. Visitors who spend less instead of more. Visitors who concentrate in the same crowded gateway instead of distributing across the destination. Every one of those choices can push the arrivals number up while pushing total economic value down. The number improves while the objective does not.
The same pattern shows up one level down, in marketing. A campaign judged on cost per acquisition can improve its reported efficiency by shifting spend toward people who had already decided to book. A retargeting pixel simply catches them on their way to a purchase they were going to make anyway. The CPA number falls while the campaign looks better. The incremental demand it was funded to create, visitors who would not have booked otherwise, does not grow at the same rate, and sometimes does not grow at all.
Three tiers, and where the real objective lives
Most dashboards collapse activity, performance, and outcome into one list, which is part of how this happens unnoticed. Separating them makes the gap visible.
| Tier | What it shows | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Activity | What the organization did | Campaigns launched, partnerships signed, media placements, content produced |
| Performance | How well the activity converted | Qualified traffic, conversion rate, cost per incremental visitor, average stay |
| Outcome | Whether the real objective moved | Incremental visitor expenditure, resident sentiment, geographic distribution of benefit, environmental pressure |
The real objective almost always lives in the outcome tier. It is also the tier most dashboards under-report, because outcome metrics are the hardest to move and the easiest to fake progress on using the other two. A destination can launch more campaigns, sign more partnerships, and improve its cost per acquisition every quarter while resident sentiment and geographic distribution of benefit stay flat or decline. Every number in the activity and performance tiers can be true and improving at once, while the tier that matters most goes unmeasured.
What to do with this
Pull your own dashboard. For every number on it, ask one question: could a team improve this number without improving the thing it is supposed to represent. If arrivals is on there, the Caribbean's 2025 season already answered that question for you. If cost per acquisition is on there, ask whether anyone is tracking how much of the improvement comes from people who were already going to book.
Where the answer is yes, that is not a reason to abandon the metric. Arrivals, occupancy, and cost per acquisition are still useful numbers. It is a reason to stop treating that number as the objective. Treat it instead as one input a level below the objective, with an outcome-tier number sitting above it that gets reported with equal prominence. Naming where the gap is takes an afternoon. Closing it is a different piece of work entirely, the kind the Caribbean's own tourism ministers are now proposing with a regional supply-side committee aimed directly at the retention problem.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a proxy metric and why is it a problem?
A proxy metric is a number used to stand in for a harder-to-measure objective, such as using visitor arrivals to represent tourism's economic contribution. The problem starts once funding, bonuses, or political accountability attach to the proxy. At that point people optimize the number rather than the objective it was meant to represent, and the two can move in opposite directions without anyone deciding to make that trade.
What happened with Caribbean tourism arrivals in 2025 and 2026?
The Caribbean Tourism Organization confirmed stay-over arrivals reached an estimated 35 million in 2025, a record and the third straight year above pre-pandemic 2019 levels. The CHTA-Amadeus 2026 Caribbean Travel Trends Report showed underlying overseas demand grew just 1 percent year on year between April 2025 and March 2026, down sharply from 21 percent and 8 percent growth in the two prior years. At the same time, Jamaica's Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett disclosed the region retains only 15 to 20 cents of every tourism dollar spent, the lowest retention rate in the world.
What is Goodhart's Law?
Goodhart's Law, named for economist Charles Goodhart, holds that once a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Applied to tourism, an arrivals target can be hit through visitors who stay fewer nights, spend less, and concentrate in already crowded areas, all while the arrivals number itself keeps climbing.
What is the difference between activity, performance, and outcome metrics?
Activity metrics count what an organization did: campaigns launched, partnerships signed, media placements. Performance metrics track how well the activity converted: qualified traffic, conversion rate, cost per incremental visitor. Outcome metrics measure whether the actual objective moved: incremental visitor expenditure, resident sentiment, geographic distribution of benefit, environmental pressure. Most dashboards over-report the first tier and under-report the third, because outcome metrics are the hardest to move and the easiest to fake progress on with the other two.
Related reading: Why GDP Is the Wrong Scorecard for Tourism and Connecting a USD 22M Promotional Investment to USD 1.8B in Economic Impact.
Work with us
Is your dashboard rewarding the wrong number?
This article names the pattern and shows you how to spot it on your own dashboard. It does not audit your specific indicators, identify where your own numbers have drifted from the objective, or rebuild your measurement hierarchy so the outcome tier gets the attention it needs. That work starts with looking at your actual data, not a general pattern. If you suspect your organization's headline metric is quietly diverging from the objective it is supposed to represent, start with a conversation.
Start a conversationSources & Notes
Caribbean Tourism Organization: 2025 annual stay-over arrivals data, released April 3, 2026, reported by Caribbean360, Caribbean Mag, Travel Daily News, and Travel Age West. Approximately 35 million stay-over arrivals, up 2.5 percent year on year, approximately 900,000 more visitors than 2024, third consecutive year above 2019 levels.
CHTA-Amadeus 2026 Caribbean Travel Trends Report: presented at the Caribbean Travel Forum, Antigua, reported by Caribbean360, May 19, 2026. Overseas demand growth of 1 percent year on year, April 2025 to March 2026, against 21 percent and 8 percent growth in the two prior comparable periods.
Tourism dollar retention: Edmund Bartlett, Jamaica Minister of Tourism, remarks at the Caribbean Travel Marketplace 2026, Antigua. Jamaica Gleaner, "Retention of tourism dollar lowest in the Caribbean," May 14, 2026. Corroborated by Jamaica Observer, May 15, 2026; NY Carib News, May 17, 2026; eTurboNews, May 14, 2026.
Goodhart's Law: Charles Goodhart, "Problems of Monetary Management: The UK Experience," 1975, commonly summarized in its popularized form as "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."