Summer in the Caribbean

Summer in the Caribbean

The Caribbean in summer? It's a more appealing option than you might think, especially if you're looking for a bargain vacation this year. Here are a few reasons:

1. Prices are lower, with some hotels and resorts cutting as much as 60 percent off their winter rates.

2. Temperatures are typically only a few degrees higher than they are in the peak travel months of January through March. And they can be even lower than you'll find at popular beach spots back in the United States. (For example, last Sunday, the temperature hit 93 in New York; it was 88 in Montego Bay, Jamaica and 88 on St. Lucia.)

3. The threat of hurricanes is certainly real, but perhaps not as great as you might imagine. Only one has hit the Caribbean before July 8 in the last decade -- Hurricane Dennis, a Category 3 storm, which passed just east and north of Jamaica on July 7, 2005, producing hurricane conditions on the island. (This year the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects a ''near normal or above normal'' hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30 with the peak typically occurring from mid-August to mid-October.)

4. Did we mention that prices are lower?

This summer, rooms at Ritz-Carlton Golf and Spa Resort, Rose Hall, in Jamaica can be had for as little as $199 a night compared with $509 in mid-March. Starting rates at the Four Seasons Resort in Nevis drop to $335 a night from $490, and families traveling with children 18 or under can get a second room for half the cost or as low as $167.50 a night.

Despite the overall trend in rising airfares, prices of Caribbean packages, including airline tickets, are down 16 percent compared with peak travel, according to CheapTickets.com. That travel Web site is offering five-night getaways from Chicago starting at $769 a person to the Gran Meliã Puerto Rico in San Juan in June, and $1,345 a person at Aruba's Hyatt Regency hotel in July from New York. FunJet Vacations has been offering three-night trips including airfare for as low as $650 a person from New York to Aruba or $765 a person to Barbados.

In some cases, practically entire islands are on sale. St. Maarten, the United States Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands are all offering island-wide summer promotions including a night free at a bevy of resorts and discounts for tourist activities. (Information at www.vacationstmaarten.com, www.usvitourism.vi, and www.caymanislands.ky.)

The islands themselves are getting a lot more aggressive about trying to lure visitors over the slower summer months with festivals that show off what the island has to offer in the way of food, history, culture or music. Each summer, for example, Barbados celebrates Crop Over (www.barbados.org/cropover.htm), a festival that can be traced back to the late 1780s, as a way to mark the end of the sugar-cane cutting season. Today, it's a tourist draw involving calypso competitions and parades. Last year, Bonaire created the water-oriented Dive into Summer event (www.bonairediveintosummer.com), which it plans to repeat this year. Grenada's Carnival, one of the island's biggest festivals, begins in July and gains momentum leading up to Carnival Sunday, usually in the second week of August.