Southern Belize Needs Your Help!

[flots am]

Caribbean cruises leave wave of bitter merchants in ports

I have zero sympathy for Jamaica.

The reason for the fence and the tour buses is because when the "vendors" were allowed access to the disembarking passengers, they were so aggressive that in the US, I'd have called the police and there would have been arrests made. Pickpockets and scams were rampant. It now requires police and automatic weapons to keep them out of the dock area.

They did it to themselves. Many tourists would simply remain on the ship or avoid the island completely for several years, until the changes were made.

Contrast this to more successful ports like Grand Cayman, Curacao or Cozumel where you walk off the ship and are in town with no problems.

This isn't rocket science and vendors crying about being victims is really just the result of their government's inability to provide an environment where tourists want to go.

flots.

flots.

 

[mikeycanuk]

Cruise lines are in business to make as much $ as possible by methods unavailable to other corporations. Sure the islands make a little cash but I bet its never even close to the promises and hype of the initial port proposals. You would think that a little research would uncover this fact but a few greased palms certainly helps. I'm sure the government of Liberia is lax about corruption laws.

 

[Ralph Capeling]

I have zero sympathy for Jamaica.
flots.

The point of the article was not to evoke sympathy for Jamaica. It was to point out that little of the economic benefit goes to the country, let alone the people who live there. The article says 80% of the earnings do not stay in the Caribbean region. For overnight tourism, most of the earnings stay in the country. I posted an earlier study that showed that cruise tourism displaces overnight tourism thus reducing the economic benefit to the country - which is very understandable if 80% of cruise tourism revenue leaves the country but 80% of overnight tourism stays in the country.

Maybe if they did not have cruise tourism in Jamaica, they would have lots of overnight tourism and those pesky people would have jobs that help tourists rather than bother them?

 

[mikeycanuk]

Jamaica has bigger issues IMO. I wouldn't stay there. We stay in rental houses and I would be worried about my families safety.

 

[flots am]

The point of the article was not to evoke sympathy for Jamaica. It was to point out that little of the economic benefit goes to the country, let alone the people who live there. The article says 80% of the earnings do not stay in the Caribbean region. For overnight tourism, most of the earnings stay in the country. I posted an earlier study that showed that cruise tourism displaces overnight tourism thus reducing the economic benefit to the country - which is very understandable if 80% of cruise tourism revenue leaves the country but 80% of overnight tourism stays in the country.

I don't know what to tell you except that I personally know a number of tour operators and they're just businesses. Some are local some aren't.

Some are owned by outside corporations or foreigners, but that has more to do with the country's business climate than how the tourist arrived. In places with bad government, poverty and crime, it takes a tremendous amount of money to ensure safety and promote the business. This leaves out the small businesses and individuals. In safer places with a better business climate, it takes nearly nothing.

The places where the locals don't get any of the money are places where it's not safe for the tourists to interact with the locals or walk around the city. It's not rocket science.

Want a bigger cut of the tourist dollars? Make Belize City a place where the tourists can walk around and not be harassed or attacked by gang members.

flots.

edit Can't seem to leave this alone. My Mr. Obvious personality has awakened:

"Folks on a Royal Caribbean cruise are not looking for culture or history for the most part. They want to shop. Go to the beach. And drink. Not necessarily in that order," said Heidi Barry Rodriguez, a librarian from Cary, North Carolina, who recently cruised on a vessel to Falmouth and didn't meet a single passenger who explored the town.
On a recent morning at Falmouth's port, tourists disembarked from Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas, a 5,400-passenger liner with a 3D movie theater, ice rink, casino and multiple restaurants and bars. Most passengers were escorted onto buses destined for package tours in Jamaican resort meccas about an hour's drive away.
One dejected vendor selling hair-braiding services shut her eyes and raised her hands skyward, praying aloud that she could make a little money.
But even passengers who skipped the packaged excursions mostly shopped at stores on the fenced-in pier or strolled along the town's waterfront trying to avoid locals hawking cha-cha rattles and tropical clothing.
"We don't discourage guests from going into the town of Falmouth, but many of our guests choose a Royal Caribbean excursion to see some of the country's beaches and famous attractions," said H.J. Harrison Liu, brand communications manager with Royal Caribbean.
Falmouth Mayor Garth Wilkinson said his town "is just not seeing the benefit to the cruise ship port."

Tourists want to be tourists. They want to see and do stuff they can't see and do at home, and want to do so with little stress or danger. It's a vacation. Nobody goes on vacation to get attacked, setup and shaken down by corrupt police, overrun by beggars, or people offering services they don't want. This is little different than the guys hanging out at the stoplight at home, begging for "spare change". I don't need to go on vacation for that, I just need to drive over to the interstate.

I feel bad for the hair braiding woman, but maybe hair-braiding just isn't all that popular. Should I also feel bad that the business is down at the typewriter repair shop? If you want to make money, you have to offer people something they want.

As ports become better-run, the locals get more money. I went diving on St. Kitts. Had a great time. The dive op was 5 minutes away. We got in around noon. By the time we left at the end of the day, he had probably $500 from just our little group and only two of us went diving.

Same thing on Curacao and Bonaire. Spent money at dive shops, ate in restaurants, paid for taxi rides around town, went to various beaches. Bought beer. Regular tourist stuff. Except that we packed up at left around 11PM there was no difference between our group and someone on a week location.

On Jamaica, Belize and Roatan, I wouldn't even consider just walking off the ship and doing whatever I felt like.

Good government, relatively safe, inviting, low-stress locations mean lots of tourist dollars for the locals. It works the other way too.

 

[Ralph Capeling]

From Amandala Newspaper Belize City

MY OPINION OF THE NCL-G

— 30 August 2013— by Joe Coye

At the center of any enlightened development philosophy for Belize should be sustainable human development and good governance – two mutually inclusive concepts. Belize, like other African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, is no longer a beneficiary of protected markets of the likes provided by our former European colonizers under the Lome Convention schemes. This period of protection was to allow our infant industries to grow, to develop, and be competitive in a highly globalized world. Unfortunately, too many of our infants never shed their diapers.What I find quite interesting in the diagnosis of the tourist industry and its ultimate product, as laid out in the Master Plan, is the emphasis on sustainability and competitive advantage. The plan speaks of six tourist products for marketing, but made it abundantly clear that the two primary motivators will be nature-based tourism and culture-based tourism.The economic wisdom was evidenced very much from the fact that we do have four unique (not uncommon, but unique) tourist assets, namely, the Barrier Reef Reserve System, the Blue Hole Marine Reserve, the Caracol Maya Site, and the Chikibul Cave System. These, of course, are complemented by the splendor of our other marine resources, our wild life, our landscapes and other Mayan sites. I need not mention the wonders of our culture and, most of all, our people.Our tourist industry functions in a very competitive sub-region, not to mention the world, and the Master Plan has precisely identified a tourist product that gives us the much needed comparative and competitive advantage: Nature-based tourism. But the Plan also in its environmental wisdom noted the fragility and sensitivity of this much sought-after product and cautioned us about its use and enjoyment in the interest of sustainability and for the use and enjoyment of the Belizean people for generations to come. Implicitly the Master Plan is warning us against the lust for instant gratification.Let us now look at the social justice and entrepreneurial aspect of it. The prerequisite for development must begin with the generation of wealth. But that wealth alone will not bring development. For wealth to be translated into development it is imperative that it be underpinned by the virtue of ordinary decency and distributive justice. But then wealth can only be created by the maximization of our limited resources.The financial data as laid out in the Master Plan make it abundantly clear that Overnight-Tourism yields almost three times what Cruise-Tourism does. Overnight-Tourism is not only overwhelming in its returns but it comes with far less risk to the nature-based asset. In other words, for every dollar earned in tourism the risk of degrading the asset by Cruise-Tourism is far greater than by Overnight because of the large gap in visitor ratio to the dollar. What seems almost obvious is that Overnight brings far more value-added to the country and by its very structure is more distributive, which will have far more positive effect on poverty alleviation, which is one of the concerns addressed by the Master Plan.Proponents of the MOU claim that Cruise Tourism can benefit Overnight Tourism by having repeat visitors cross over to Overnight. That may be true. But there is the risk of having the opposite effect on both because of overcrowding.I am not averse to Cruise-Tourism, but the issue of sustainability, maximization of our resources, particularly our degradable natural heritage, distributive justice and meaningful and sincere consultation must be prominently factored into the decision-making process. Theoretically and morally speaking our collective business acumen and common sense should instruct us, given our smallness and limitation of resource, to structure our plan to sell the most first to the highest bidder, and then the excess to the next best bidder, and so on. Who among us could be so selfish and unpatriotic to seek first for the very few at the expense of the very many?Twenty-five years for an investor with such concessions for exclusivity, tax exemptions, and, paradoxically, tax sharing, may be long enough to recover its investment with a more than reasonable return. But for Belize and its prized ecosystem it may just be too long. I do not think we can afford it. Such mass tourism is no doubt compatible where the product is mostly artificial and man-made, like the Atlantis in the Bahamas. These are repairable and replaceable. Our natural wonders are not.I assume the negotiators for the MOU were sincere and if they are wrong, then they can only be sincerely wrong. Many people believe you may be wrong. But too many people believe you are wrong. Be once again magnanimous. Let’s put our trust in our collective wisdom and the NSTMP and go back to the drawing board.THE BEST TIME TO HAVE PLANTED THE TREE WAS THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. THE NEXT BEST TIME IS NOW.

 

[flots am]

You keep posting the same thing said by different people: that the "day visitors don't leave as much money in the economy as the overnight."

That's simply a description, not a problem or a solution. If it is real, then it's up to the country to change it. Want to keep more money? Make a place where tourists want to spend it.

flots

 

[Ralph Capeling]

You keep posting the same thing said by different people: that the "day visitors don't leave as much money in the economy as the overnight."

That's simply a description, not a problem or a solution. If it is real, then it's up to the country to change it. Want to keep more money? Make a place where tourists want to spend it.

flots

Flots - I think you are missing the point. We have a place where tourists want to visit now (and spend money). and the numbers increase every year at a slow enough rate of increase that the infrastructure can handle. The concern is the mass tourism will destroy that. The financial argument is that the proponents it will bring jobs and money to the country. The opponents say it will drive overnight tourists away and thus reduce the economic benefits of tourism in southern Belize.
For those not in the tourism business here (and many in the tourism business), the huge concern is the impact on the environment.
By the way, some of those "same thing by different people" include a significant amount of data that supports what they are saying.
Those in the tourism business in Placencia (like the Belize Tourism Industry Board) oppose this project.
The problem: Mass tourism is bad for southern Belize. The solution: continue to develop overnight tourism


By the way - these different people are often ones who will be affected by the development. What is your stake in this?

 

[flots am]

By the way - these different people are often ones who will be affected by the development. What is your stake in this?

I like to see private businesses grow. It annoys me when people complain about the way things are and then refuse to make changes. Depending on a homogenous set of tourist activities (overnight SCUBA) severely limits your market and potential income.

But really, I have no stake in this. I travel every year with between 12 and 20 friends (depends on the year). The wives don't dive and most of the guys do, so we compromise and book cruises where the guys can dive and the wives can shop or hang out on a beach or find something else to do.

We're not alone. The ships are full of mixed groups like this and it works great in most ports. Belize is one of the few cruise ports that's very nearly hostile to cruise ship tourists.

But again, it's not a problem for me. After a number of years being bored wandering around the "tourist village", the wives really don't want to come back, which means that we'll probably start selecting cruises that don't include Belize.

We already skip Jamaica, and found that Limon, Costa Rica, Panama and Cartagena are more than happy to have day-tourists. Costa Rica, for example, has some awesome river-rafting and nobody made us feel like we were annoying them by showing up.

BTW, "mass tourism" isn't bad. It's only bad when poorly managed. If an area can't handle it, it's only because it's not managed correctly.

 

[USdiver1]

I first visited the Sapodilla Cayes in 1985 while living in Honduras. I was a pretty regular visitor from 1986 - 1989 coming over from Omoa, Honduras in a twin outboard Boston Whaler and diving from Hunting Caye up to Ranguana Caye. The diving at that time was spectacular, and the development was ... non-existent. It was just as God intended it to be, a little bit of paradise on Earth.

I agree with your point, Mass tourism in any form (but especially in cruise ships) is bad for Southern Belize. You have only to look at Roatan to see what I mean. IMO the cruise ships have not done anything substantial to really benefit the majority of the islanders, and their presence has degraded the natural environment , be it the waters of the specially built harbor or the harbor itself, dedicated to the cruise ships and nobody else.

Keep fighting the good fight, hope you are successful.