F.C.C.A. President Does Site Visit
The Port of Magical Belize appears to have the support of the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association for the development of the cruise port in Belize District. At the invitation of David Gegg, Chief Executive Officer of Portico Enterprises, a team of executives from the F.C.C.A., including its president Michelle Paige, traveled to Belize for a site visit.
Michelle Paige
Michelle Paige, President, Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association
“It was extremely, extremely important that we come here because we had the opportunity to see an oversight, firsthand, of [Port] of Magical Belize. Yesterday, as soon as we arrived we took a helicopter over to see the actual site which was quite impressive. We had in-depth meetings to be able to showcase what the project was going to entail. We have had meetings with the Ministry of Tourism to underline that the private sector needs to make more economic impact from the cruise passengers. In addition to that, how we can hire more Belizeans to work on the cruise ships and be able to purchase more of what is grown here locally in Belize. In addition, we met this morning with the Minister of Ports to be able to have a closer relationship and understand what it is that we need to do to be able to assist Belize and Belize to assist us. And so, it’s been a whirlwind meeting for twenty-four hours. What excites us is that the ships that are being built today are bigger. We are not able to tender passengers from the bigger ships. So that’s number one. Having a tender port is not an option with the bigger ships; we have to be able to berth. In addition, right here and now, when we tender passengers in, the crew are not able to get off because we don’t have enough time. So just looking at the opportunity that a facility of that magnitude offers to Belize in terms of what the economic impact is: number one, the ships are about forty percent bigger, so you get forty percent more passengers. In addition, for every passenger there is a half a crew member. So if it’s a six thousand passenger ship, we’re talking about three thousand crew members that are able to come and spend money.”
