By Janet Silvera, Freelance WriterSAN JUAN, Puerto Rico:
CARIBBEAN HOTELIERS and several land-based tourism entities are again calling on the Governments of the region to level the playing field between themselves and the cruise ship industry.
Faced with the difficult choice of closing their doors, cutting staff and having to resort to financial aid, while some cruise lines report some $800 million in profit in one year, the land-based operators said it was time that Governments protect their interest.
"I want to emphasise that this is not the hotel industry against the cruise ship industry. What we are asking is for the field to be levelled in terms of taxation and concessions," says Alec Sanguinetti, director-general of the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA).
Mr. Sanguinetti was speaking at a press conference at the close of Caribbean Marketplace 2003, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, yesterday.
According to him, the tremendous cost to land-based tourism has affected the region's ability to be competitive, particularly in the English-speaking Caribbean, "as it relates to the cost of energy utility and labour."
A recent Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) survey showed that the average stop-over visitor spends US$200 in taxes for a three-night stay in comparison to a cruise ship passenger that spends a quarter of that figure.
"This shows the imbalance, while the region's hotels and other vital land-based tourism services are fighting for financial survival," remarked Mr. Sanguinetti.
He said although there was a lot of enthusiasm from a number of tourism ministries for the new businesses being generated by the calls from the cruise industry, the long-term effects point to disaster.
Surveys show that where there was a concentration of cruise ships calling on certain destinations, hotel occupancy has remained stagnant and in some cases declined.
Airlines are also reportedly feeling the economic impact. This is being done where cruise lines are repositioning their ships to mainland ports, allowing visitors to drive to home ports is also said to be taking its toll on a number of airlines.
Between the months of January to October, 665,141 cruise ship passengers visited Jamaica, over 1.5 million visited the Bahamas, 1.4 million went to the Cayman Islands, 1.28 million made calls on the United States Virgin Islands and St. Maarten received over 723,000.
