Significant Loss of Revenue Estimated As Tourists Head to Other Destinations

From a dollars and sense perspective, the two-day loss has amounted to approximately one point eight million Belize dollars in revenue, notwithstanding the head tax that would have been collected by the Belize Tourism Board. Director of Cruise and Regional Operations at B.T.B., Valdemar Andrade, gave an update on the cancellations.

Valdemar Andrade, Director of Cruise and Regional Operations, B.T.B.

“One of the issues that we have here is that because we are a tender port when we have these northerlies it’s always very risky to try to tender the people from ship to shore and so the procedure is normally if it’s blowing at a speed that would affect the tendering then, you know, the captains on the ship generally make a call.  Today we had, yes, cancellation of three ships.  The issue is that when they reach the English Caye Harbor they basically reported fifty knots, that the winds are blowing at fifty knots and so the captains made a decision to continue on, you know.”

Isani Cayetano

Valdemar Andrade

“In terms of the number of tourists who would have disembarked between Wednesday and Thursday, today, what are we looking at?”

Valdemar Andrade

“We’re looking at a total of fifteen thousand, one [hundred] and forty-four and around twelve thousand would have disembarked between those two days; five thousand from the two ships that didn’t come on Wednesday and another nine thousand, seven [hundred] and thirty-eight that didn’t come from the three ships today.”

Isani Cayetano

“In terms of dollars and sense and the average a tourist would spend on Belize, what are we looking at?”

Valdemar Andrade

“Well we’re basically looking, each tourist normally spends around seventy-five U.S. per tourist and so you can do the math.  If you’re looking at twelve thousand times seventy-five you are looking at significant revenues.  Also, in terms of head tax, you know, because alone between all of those fifteen thousand tourists we’re looking at around two hundred thousand dollars head tax, two hundred thousand plus head tax that we lost.”

Isani Cayetano

“And this is due in part to the fact that we don’t have a proper docking facility where we don’t have to actually tender these vessels but they can come to the dock and people can then disembark.”

Valdemar Andrade

“Yes.  The issue that we have come looking at over the years with respect to as cruise tourism has grown to where it is today, we’re looking at almost a million passengers this year.  Yes, there’s definitely a need to have a port, especially then also that the ships are going more to the Oasis-class which are four thousand plus passengers, plus crew.  And so you are looking at huge amounts of people that you would have to tender back and forth or move back and forth.  And so, definitely, you know, there is a need for a port.  The government has recognized that and has made certain moves to be able to do that.”

We’ll have more on the passing cold front in tonight’s weather report.