BIG FUROR OVER CANCELLATION OF BELIZE TENDER OPERATORS WITH MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN INVESTMENTS, MORTGAGED TO BANKS TO SERVE VISITING CRUISE SHIPS
In my view, all tendering shuttle tickets should be revenue for a Belize corporation. So should all tour sites, trips, etc. The individual operators could issue books of coupons, or tickets to cruise ships at a discount of 3% off the price for 100 or more, or 2% of smaller amounts like two dozen tickets or coupons. The cruise ships in turn could thus sell them to speed up the process to their onboard customers, collecting the discount commission. Or the tourists could buy them at the dock in the landing port, tourist village.
None of these facilities and services should be more than held as minority stock ownership by cruise ships, or foreign corporations. The usual ratio is 49% foreign capital and 51% local ownership for local corporations.
I would like to see what a meeting of Mexico, Honduras and Belize regional government regional tourist departments come up with? It may be in Belize the BTB would have to set up a department to handle ticket and coupon books to deal with the cruise ships, or their agents and sell them in bulk?
The majority money that comes from Belize services and tourist sites should stay in Belize exclusively. Tourist hotels like moveable cruise ships keep their hotel money and they keep a small commission on speeding up the process on board. 2% commission on smaller groups and 3% commission on larger groups and they could buy their coupons or tickets in advance in bulk. I suppose their agent Euro Caribe could buy the coupons and tickets in bulk and forward them to Miami, or where ever?
--- On Sat, 1/8/11, Charlie Trew
From: Charlie Trew
Subject: Bz-Culture: PM Meets With Cruise Executives In Miami
To: "Belize Culture"
Date: Saturday, January 8, 2011, 3:15 PM
7newsbelize.com:
Today in Miami, the Prime Minister and his team held meetings with executives of Carnival and Royal Caribbean Cruise lines about the fate of tender operators in Belize.
One of the critical issues is in that discussion is who knew what and when did they know it - that is, who failed to tell the tender operators that they needed to upgrade or face extinction? They were given no notice and in his press conference yesterday, the PM made it clear someone was to blame:
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"In terms of the tender operators, they had no notice, we cannot allow in my view for their business to be eliminated in one fell swoop without any prior notification. Certainly I can't understand why there was no prior notification of the desire to change policy. One answer to that that has been given was that there was such notification, that in fact Carnival contracts tender services, who in turn sub-contracts, and that main provider was told some time ago that these are the changes that Carnival wishes to make and it is my understanding that Carnival felt that that main provider would in turn inform the sub-contractors. Now that wasn't done. At this juncture I have to confess to you that I still am not certain where - and I am not going to shy away from the word - the fault lies in terms of not giving the owners of these smaller tenders any opportunity to transition, any opportunity to prepare for the shift in policy."
That shipping agent is Eurocaribe and they issued a press release this evening saying it's not their fault. The release says, quote: "We were informed about Carnival Cruise Line's new policy on January 3rd, 2011 at a meeting in Miami. This information was relayed the same day, to all the tender operators who are contracted to do tendering for CCL." The release adds that the trend of upgrading tendering vessels was set in 2001 by the arrival of the 150 passenger catamaran, "M.V. Big Momma", owned by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. The result of those Miami meetings will be made known at a press conference on Monday…
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