Here's what I worry about. As this drags on, unemployment will rise, along with civil unrest and crime rates. I'm an expat, I can always go home to Florida. Unemployed native Caymanians don't have that luxury. Cayman will lose its competitive edge in the market as a result. Cayman is known as a safe, clean, luxury destination, and this reputation will gradually falter. Investors will lose confidence investing in business and properly and it will start a downward spiral.
CITA, and other organizations like Reopen Cayman have been cast in a negative light currently. Every time one of our press releases goes out, comments on social media are usually negative - here's some rich business owners trying to get more rich. Marc Langevin, GM of the Ritz and President of CITA gets it the worst. What people fail to realize is Mr Langevin is less concerned about his own personal wealth - he will continue to eat dinner every night - and more for the welfare of his recently laid off housekeepers and grounds crew, servers, and other low-wage employees who live paycheck to paycheck, and now have nothing.
We've been looking at data from Aruba, Bermuda, St Lucia, Turks and Caicos, Barbados, USVI, Bahamas, St Kitts, Anguilla, and the BVI. All of these islands are open, and all of them (with the exception of the Bahamas, who have made some serious mistakes) are keeping the issue relatively in hand. USVI is actually doing quite well, with over 5000 air arrivals weekly and 70% occupancy. The
A Safe & Measured Reopening For The Cayman Islands | Reopen Cayman site has some insight into what some of the phased opening proposals are. Understand I've seen quite a bit of data over the last month, some of it is not for public release, and much of it changes on a daily basis, so I have to be careful what I post publicly.
Bermuda is a good example to look at. They've had an uprising in community spread cases lately. However it's very important to note that Bermuda has 2 different protocols for air arrivals - one for visitors and one for returning residents, which is far more lax and does not require a pre-arrival test. According to the data we've been provided, the community outbreak has been contact traced to returning residents who did not honor their isolation/quarantine protocols. There have been no instances we are aware of, of community transmission from visitors arriving to Bermuda. As Cayman allows returning residents, the vary same outbreak could just as easily occur here.
Cayman is already at a disadvantage. People wish to travel, and they are traveling. Our inbox is full of "is the border open" emails. If they cannot come to Cayman, they will (and are) going elsewhere. Customers who were loyal to Cayman, are discovering other islands are safe and clean, and we are slowly losing brand loyalty.
I don't have figures on how many stay longer than a week. I don't have my DOT report handy, and I'm not sure it even says in any case. Certainly some do. We have folks like Mike on this board, who in a normal world, stay here 6 months of the year. We have lots of business people who will stay here, sometimes for months on end, and dive between their business days. We have fractional condo owners who will stay here for the duration of their time slot - sometimes 6-8 weeks per year. However the vast majority tend to dome down for a week at a time. Due to our proximity and direct flights to places like South Florida, Houston, Atlanta, and even the Northeast US, some people just come for long weekends.
I can tell you though, about 85% of tourists here are from the United States, with about 7% Canadian. European countries are a very small part of our tourism demographic, so the long stays from these travelers is certainly in the minority.
Tony
