BELIZE TOUR GUIDES CLAIM FAVORITISM BY BELIZE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES FOR CARICOM TOUR COMPANIES

CRUISE SHIP TOURISM HAS DEVELOPED AN UNFAIR PLAYING FIELD. LOCAL TOUR OPERATORS WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO APPLY THE RULES EQUALLY.

In Western Belize the primary sites and tours for TOUR COMPANY buses from the coastal CRUISE SHIPS, are CAVES BRANCH. This is a tree top ZIP LINE adventure operation, and floating on tractor rubber inner tubes through an underground river cave system. The other favorite site is the Mayan Temple pyramid system complex of XUNANTUNICH, about 1500 years old. Sometimes the TOUR BUSES also visit the other famous MAYAN TEMPLE site of CAHEL PECH, which was built by the previous Mayan civilization about 3500 years ago. With a gap between the two Mayan civilizations of roughly a 1000 years politically. Both sites are rapidly available for short visit cruise ship passengers on the 4 hour time table allotted for a Belize visit. The Western highway is an asphalt paved, narrow two lane road, permitting a round trip in the allotted visiting time for Belize by the cruise ships.

There is a government regulation in Belize that TOUR OPERATOR run operations for CAVES BRANCH tour trips are limited to 8 persons per tour guide. Recently one or two CARICOM country FEDERATION tour operations from the EASTERN CARIBBEAN islands have started operating in Belize with solid negotiated CRUISE SHIP contracts for such services, in competition with local TOUR GUIDE operators in Belize. The locals are being squeezed out, under the new CME rules that allow foreign competition in Belize by other CARICOM persons and businesses.
The local TOUR GUIDES complain the small number of Belize TOUR GUIDES have difficulty in competing with the CRUISE SHIPS because they do their negotiating out in the Eastern island countries of CARICOM among the 25 million population. Here in Belize the population is about 350,000 ( we await the new census figures ). The local TOUR OPERATIONS previously working with the visiting CRUISE SHIPS, complain unfair treatment by our local BELIZE government, as inspections, head counting regulations and such, are being enforced on local BELIZE independent Tour Operations, and the contracted Eastern Caribbean two new companies coming in, are not meeting the same local standards. They complain of cruise ship TOURS by these contractors are being allowed to pass without any counting or regulation and are running anywhere from 12, 15, to 20 people tubing in CAVES BRANCH, or at the Mayan pyramids for only one TOUR GUIDE. The tour buses are being passed without inspection, or head counting per tour guide numbers. While local TOUR OPERATORS are being emphatically fined and inspected. If the local TOUR OPERATIONS have ONE person over the 8 limit per tour guide, they are stopped. Whereas the CRUISE SHIP groups and CARICOM Tour Operations are unregulated and not inspected.
They claim the playing field is not fair and the worst culprit is our own government.