Minister: Bz. can balance cruise & o’night tourism

But as the Belize Hotel Association gets its residential act together, they’ve still got an old beef with cruise tourism, particularly as two big deals are in the works that would open Belize to over a million cruise visitors a year. As these of one-day tourists hit the city streets and rural destinations, the B.H.A. and many others, are worried about the ability to handle all those people and the possible degradation of Belize’s tourism product. According to Minister of Tourism, Mark Espat, managing the two sectors will be challenging, but it can be done.

Mark Espat, Minister of Tourism

“It is a challenge that has faced the Caribbean in general. Before in Belize, before 1998 when the cruise sector was virtually nonexistent, it wasn’t as much a challenge for us here. More recently it has been so, especially since this year we’re expecting over half a million cruise visitors, as opposed to two hundred overnight visitors. And next year, that figure should go up to over eight hundred thousand in 2004 and a similar amount in 2005. The challenge is really, we believe, a question of management, a question of trying to direct the cruise passengers to those sites that are most convenient, such as Altun Ha, such as the Jaguar Paw Caves, the Caves Branch caves, Xunantunich, and developing more exclusive, more exquisite destinations for the overnight visitors who pay a premium and who want to feel as though they are getting something of greater value. It is challenge because the industry, especially the cruise industry is growing very fast, and so I hope that we can step up and meet those challenges.”

According to Espat, out of the two hundred and sixty million dollars in tourist receipts collected last year, approximately sixty million came from Belizean hotels.