CRUISE SHIP TOURISM, BELIZEANS WANT IT CUT DOWN TO A MANAGEABLE SIZE!

The escalation in numbers of cruise ships and larger size vessels, swamps local infra-structure in the Belize harbor port. 2010.



THE DEBATE ON HOW TO GET RID OF CRUISE SHIP TOURISM, OR CUT IT DOWN TO A MANAGEABLE SIZE CONTINUES ON THE BELIZE CULTURE LIST SERVE. ( To join the listserve debate send an email to: bz-culture@psg.com and put the word subscribe in the body of the message, but do not include any other headers or footers in the email.

From Charlie:
I was amazed and dismayed in reading the report on the cruise ship industry that Wendy sent.
Cruise ship passengers contribute so little compared to overnight visitors that it's no comparison.
Cruise ship passengers spend an average of $44 per visit plus pay a $7 head tax, $4 of which goes to a private corporation partially owned by one of the cruise lines. The remaining money goes to the BTB and the PACT fund. Plus, tour operators and others have to pay fees back to the cruise lines for the tourists that are sent to them by the cruise lines.
Overnight visitors spend an average of $96 per day, plus they stay 6.8 nights on average. So they are contributing 14 times the money than a cruise passenger. But wait! There's more! Overnight people pay nearly a $40 tax when flying out of the country or almost $20 if going out by ground -- like when I go to Guatemala on almost every trip. Plus, overnighters are likely to pay other taxes like general sales tax, dining tax, gasoline tax, etc., etc.
There is just no comparison. Plus, there are intangibles like pollution, dumping and other stuff the cruise ships are no doubt doing.
The coupon program to entice cruise people to come back for an overnight trip does not work. Anyone could have told you that because cruise people are cruise people, not adventure traveler types.
The cruise ships are taking everyone for a ride and not the kind you want. As the report notes, while it's too late to realistically cancel the whole mess there is absoltely no point in expanding it at all. Cap it off where it's at now in Belize City and do not send it down to Placencia or anywhere else.
Belize and other countries should band together and stop letting these cruise lines jerk them around like they are now. That was recommended in the report, too, but obviously nothing has been done.

--- On Sat, 1/22/11, Mary Toy wrote:


From: Mary Toy
Subject: Re: Bz-Culture: Hopefully Carnival will cut more cruise ships from Belize visitation schedule.
To: bz-culture@psg.com
Date: Saturday, January 22, 2011, 5:11 AM

Ray:
I’d say the majority of the people in the south don’t want cruise ships down here, either. You’ve seen what they’ve done to the places they visit in western, central and northern Belize. Why ever would we want them to come down here and do the same thing?
We already have enough problems from over fishing, unsustainable coastal and caye development and climate change to need any more problems from cruise ships and their passengers who spend little money in our country, chase away our overnight visitors and degrade the environment.
So, don’t send them OUR way.
Mary