Placencia says an emphatic NO! to cruise tourism
Stuart Krohn
The introduction of cruise tourism to Placencia Village and its surrounding communities is business residents of southern Belize are strongly against. The main concern down south is that the quiet and tranquility of the peninsula would be lost to mass tourism. If the plan proceeds, Placencia would become the second major hub within the country to moor ships belonging to Royal Caribbean, one of the major cruise ship lines that calls on Belize. In the midst of the controversy is the transaction under which a three acre parcel of land was bought to establish a marketplace. On Friday evening, emotions were running high at a consultation exercise held by the Belize Tourism Board to engage stakeholders in the proposed plan. Among the most outspoken was real estate developer Stewart Krohn; things got a bit heated when he pointed out to the panel that a conflict of interest exists between the company which bought the tract of land and Century 21, the company which sold it to Royal Caribbean. In the middle of it all is CEO in the Ministry of Tourism, Mike Singh, a principal of Century 21.
Stewart Krohn, Land Developer, Placencia Village
“I’m a developer and have been in the business for a while and I know our friends work at San Pedro at Journey’s End but I’ve never quite seen a developer that goes and accumulates a parcel of land for a specific purpose which is cruise tourism and then the people are going to be asked “well do they like this?” Usually you don’t buy your land until something’s a done deal.”
Moderator
“Stewart, Stewart what’s the question you’re going to ask in relation to that?”
Stewart Krohn
“Oh I’m going to get to it Rich, thank you.”
Moderator
“I want to give other people the opportunity to talk tonight also.”
Stewart Krohn
“You know Rich, you gave those people plenty of time Rich and you never cut off any of those people when they were talking okay. Just remember that.
We all know that that parcel, the parcels of land assembled there were done by Mr. Bradley Reinhardt of Century 21. Mike Singh is a principal of Century 21, so when we talk about process how can the CEO, and I am not accusing Mike Singh who is an old colleague of mine. I’m not accusing Mike of doing some deal that would just benefit himself but the fact is he is the only one, he and Bradley are the ones to have benefited from this deal and he is the CEO. We call that a conflict of interest. I don’t know how he can perform that role.”
Mike Singh, CEO, Ministry of Tourism
mike singh
“Stewart, thank you. Let me talk about process. Let me talk about the process for a second. Sorry, I have flu so my throat’s a little bit bad here but so if I lose you that’s because I… Bradley Reinhardt first of all is an independent agent. Bradley operates an independent office of Century 21. Bradley operates an independent office, if you look at any sign for Century 21 it says each office operates independently. I resigned from my business three years ago when I joined government. I have no involvement day to day on any decision making. For you to tell me that that is an issue then I will tell you that if Bradley sells a property at Coco Plum then am I not allowed to have any discussion about your hotel license? Come on, let’s be real. Let’s be real, Belize is a small place. There is all kinds of connections in all kinds of different businesses. So it is the hands off approach that I have taken with Century 21 remains that way and you can check that anywhere. I don’t sign on a check, I don’t even sit in meetings anymore because I’ve resigned and I now operate as a government executive.”
The Placencia Tour Operators Association and the Village Council led by Charles Leslie Jr. oppose cruise tourism in Placencia officially stating that it will create adverse effects to fragile marine and terrestrial ecosystems within the area. We will have more on the consultations that were held this past weekend in Wednesday’s newscast.
not only will bring corruption destruction and filth would also bring all those convicts from the us to the islands also bring all those people who will be destroying the peace and tranquility to the area say no no.
I am glad that the community in Placencia or the people of Placencia are against this nonsense,yes its going to bennifit them in some sense but with all the drama going on right now with Royal Caribbean and the Tourism industry in Belize City and else where,my hope would be that the people of Placencia not get involved,let them take thier problems else where.
My opinion is that the real Placencia villagers, the ones that have lived and grown in the “real” community, not the condos, hotels, villas, wouldn’t mind an opportunity to make a living or get a piece of the pie from cruise tourism. My guess is that those that are very focal against this opportunity are those that own hotels, condos etc..or employed by those who do. the fear of the rich deprives those who are needy.
Even if Mike Sing is no longer a principal with Century 21 he is a government official with the department of Tourism which will still make his involvement with this project a conflict of interest. What is wrong with these guys so much greed and corruption in this government when they should be holding themselves above reproach, I think Mike Sing should resign from his position with government.
Mike Sing IS INVOLVED. This project was cooked and signed before he took the government position. You can bet on that… After all do you think this project took a couple of weeks to make oh no no no it took a couple of years..Mike may fool some of the people not all….Mike Sing only loves Mike Sing’s bank account not the PEOPLE OF BELIZE…
I am against this nonsense because it will not really benefit Belizean that are in need. Let’s save our land for our children. These people are wealthy and greedy.
it will NOT benefit any resident of the peninsula. apparently none of our restaurants, gift shops or hotels are good enough for the cruise lines–they have to build their own. so how do any of us benefit? we spent 30 + yrs building up overnight tourism on the peninsula, we did not do that so cruise ships could come in & take over Placencia Point or our way of life. cruise ships pollute the sea, they want to run jet skis through our lagoon which we are all against. we have a tourism product already, we don’t need or want them, and we cannot afford to clean up any of their garbage or sewage.
If the locals dont want it, why do it. They will be the ones that loose in the long run and they know it. Look at San Pedro now, paved roads, overloaded with cars and unecessary . We need to keep some spots pure, and i am on the locals side on this one. If it goes aghead its because individuals other than locals are going to benefit. Trouble is, a deal has probably already been signed, and it’s too late.
I remember years ago, going to Placencia when the town had scrapped together money to develop simple little thatched huts on the sea side (and I nearly burnt it down because we had to burn the toilet paper), and it was run effectively by the women of the village. Rudimentary but wonderful, and some of the best memories of my life.
Wealth in Belize is currently flying accross the border to foreign entities, educated students are not returning home because of this type of activity. If you want to keep calling Belize a jewel, then preserve some of the quaint and beautiful sites.
We have to draw the line between progression and loss of character. Placencia can probably be improved a little, but lets not make it the next San Pedro.
The Council members has not made a statement against or for it. The views are from the Chairperson himself. Council members had no idea of his appearance on Open Your Eyes. From talking to the council members, they want to find out from the locals what their feelings are before taking a stance. If you look at the people speaking it was mostly only the expat and investors. They came here and as one local said they want us to be under them, but we all have a dream, so let us make that dream come through. The foreigners who are here wants to be in control and we have to get up and show them that we were here first and we will be first in decision making.
Star,
I am one who found Placencia to be a fantastic place to buy a small home for my vacations and future retirement. And I agree that the people of Placencia and the area need good jobs and a higher standard of living. But cruise lines are not the way to do it. People like me spend weeks or months at a time there, spend our money in the local stores, restaurants, and tours. I pay my electric bill, butane bill. I have a bank account there. I help support the community. Cruise tourists will only be there for a day, will shop at stores owned by the cruise company, will eat at restaurants owned by the cruise company, will go on tours that are “recommended” by the cruise company (which means they will have to meet certain requirements, and pay a portion of their income to the cruise line). Once the cruise lines are established, and if they smell a profit in overnight land tours, they will develop their own hotels for any extended stay guests. They will own the buses and other transportation modes to get their guests around the country. So most of the local business owners will be forced out of business, and they will have lots of minimum wage jobs, with cute uniforms and taught how to be nice to the ugly Americans who only want a sanitized version of Belize with lots of cheap, made in China trinkets. Also, Placencia does not have the necessary water, sewer, roads, solid waste, police or emergency services to handle large amount of cruise tourists. The cruise lines won’t pay for those services. Who will? Placencia will have to implement taxes on its citizens.
Look ya Star! to help with your guessing and opinion…
I grew up in the “real” Placencia community before the tourism boom, and I DON’T SUPPORT CRUISE TOURISM IN THE VILLAGE. In fact dih people weh know bout Placencia from the old days dah dih ones weh wah tell you suh.
Why make Placencia into another Cozumel, St. Thomas?
Don’t you see the value in this place? Have you been here? Do you really know our worth? Obviously NOT.
We need to stop mind @*%king our local people into feeling like a small job of servitude is all there is to a livelihood on the peninsula. That’s the kind of job opportunities mass tourism like cruise tourism encourages.
Piece of the pie, you seh? Yuh mean CRUMBS ah dih pie. Yuh know weh ah mean? Dih lee bit weh left eena dih pie pan when everybadih done get deh piece.
CRUISE TOURISM IS NOT THE WAY TO ENCOURAGE BIG DREAMS for the LOCALS.
And, please nuh talk fuh me. You guess wrong!
Cruise ship tourism will chase away Placencia’s very lucrative overnight tourism business. Cruise tourists spend an average of US$44 a day, most of that in stores owned or controlled by the cruise ship companies and with tour operators owned or controlled by the cruise ship companies.
In contract, just two guys will spend US$3,000 – US$4,500 on a 7 trip to Belize depending on the type of lodging they want. Of that amount, the LOCAL guide gets US$1,875 dollars for 5 days of fishing – not BZ$40 a day as a snorkeling guide. A local hotel gets from US$600 – US$1900 for that week, again, depending on the level of accommodations. The locally owned airlines get another US$362 for domestic airfare. Government makes US$234 in taxes from just the fishing trip alone. It gets another US$78 from the departure tax and US$50-US$173 in hotel tax, again, depending on the accommodations chosen by the fishermen.
Local restaurants will get at least 14 dinners sold from just these two guys at an average US$15 per dinner, so that’s US$210 in the hands of local restaurants for just dinner, not including breakfasts – either eaten out or from supplies bought from local grocery stores.
And, everyone know fishermen like to have a drink now and again, so three drinks per guy per night at US$3 a drink and that’s another US$60 (minimum) for a bar owner. Then there’s souvenirs for the wife and kids, taxis between the Village and the airstrip, not to mention tips, and we all know fishermen are usually pretty good tippers.
So, just TWO guys end up putting US$3,500 – US$5,000 DIRECTLY into the hands of local people and the government in just 7 nights. And, in the process, they get to know their guides and learn about their families, meet people at dinner and at the bars and shops and get to learn a little bit about them. And, if we do things right, they come back, maybe for another fishing trip, or maybe this time with mom and the kids, which will just about double their investment in our community in just ONE family trip. Plus, it’s not uncommon for local guides to go visit their clients in their own home countries – one fishing guide from Placencia just came back from a week in Montana visiting a client.
They don’t just come, take pictures of the “locals” and leave, never to be seen again. Think we’ll be making friends with any of these people?
Now let’s see how that stacks up against cruise ship passengers.
In a study sponsored and funded by the BTB, in 2006, Belize had 655,929 cruise ship passengers visit the country, and 247,309 overnight tourists. Cruise passengers spent US$28,860,876. Overnight tourists spent US$161,492,777 – so 84% of the income we received from tourism in 2006 came from overnight tourists, who comprised just 27% of the actual number of tourists.
So that means it would take 80 to 114 cruise ship tourists to replace just two guys going fishing in Placencia. And, instead of US$1875 going to a local guide, US$625 would have gone to the cruise ship company, about US$375 would have gone to the tour operator and the guide would have ended up with US$875, less than 50% of what he would have made from our two guys on their fishing trip.
Hotels would get nothing. Local restaurant would get nothing since the passengers eat on the ship and their lunch is provided for the tours, and the local gift shops would also get nothing since the passengers would have bought their souvenir T-shirts (which is almost all they buy) from the shops in the tourist village – owned or controlled by the cruise ship companies themselves.
And how about sewage and garbage? Two guys using the bathroom and throwing away plastic and paper for 7 days versus 80 to 114 people using the bathroom and creating garbage. Plus, our two fishermen don’t bring bilge water, ballast water and sewage from another 1198 people with them when they come.
Do cruise ship tourism really, truly make sense?
I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. With our horrendous crime rate, and having the distinction of being the # 1 MURDER capital in the world, not to mention our AIDS/HIV rates, why the heck would they WANT to come here?
Are you kidding me? Cortez is not correct. The Iines do not own things, they CONTRACT out to local businesses. The money and jobs that the Cruise industry would bring here would improve our roads,& our schools. The citizens will not be taxed…the fees WE charge to the cruise lines pays for the needed water, sewer, and ancillary services. DO the research. Look @ Costa Maya Mexico, or even Aruba…Those places are so much better off financially…Heck, Aruba is now as exclusive as Monaco…and the locals are all becoming RICH!! Sign me up…I’m all for it!
Cortez, the reality of the situation is that your support a few weeks or months in the year won’t put their kids through high school much alone college. I am not for a cruise contract that is all exclusive to the company alone, but one where stakeholders can negotiate for the best best interest of the people of Placencia, not the expats and those employed by them. My aunt can do hair braiding, if she can do that to 5 people from the cruise line a day that’s something more than nothing, it opens avenue for women’s group, and other entrepreneurs, but it’s something that people who have the best interest of the locals should be pushing, not those that care more about it affecting their own business. I don’t think that blatantly opposing is the right thing to do, but negotiation is key here.
Immafan………. calling BELIZE the murder capital of the world shows how uneducated you are…. ever hear of Juarez, Mexico???????? You need to keep hope alive
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN………….. he who feels it knows it.
DON’T SELL YOUR SOUL FOR A FEW DOLLARS…………
Star and Immafan,
Neither of you appears to know anything about cruise lines. The cruise lines will own anything that can make a profit. I’ve lived in Alaska for 35 years. Princess cruises owns the hotels, the buses and the concessions where they take their land tours. Last year, the state of Alaska tried to implement stricter pollution controls and a $47 head tax to help cover expenses. The cruise lines threatened to pull out. Last month the governor withdrew the proposals. And we are the second most popular destination of cruises in the world. So the cruise lines were able to tell the State of Alaska to go pack sand. How well do you think the Placencia Village Council will be able to dictate to the cruise companies? And Alaska pays all of the infrastructure, not the cruise lines.
And Star, when I’m not using my condo, I rent it out. So most of the year, there are people there that are eating at local restaurants and using local services, shopping at Wallins, eating at Wendy’s taking Seahorse charter tours, diving with Avadon and getting a drink at Barefoot.
Immafan, they do not contract out once they find a profit. As I mentioned before, they OWN the Princess lodges here in Alaska. They OWN the Westmark hotel in Anchorage. They OWN the buses that they use to transport. They OWN the railroad cars that take the passengers to the Princess hotels. And on those railroad cars they provide drinks and food. So the only money that Alaskan’s make is the minimum wage for serving food and drinks, or making up beds at the hotels. Check into who the parent company is of every vendor the cruise lines use. And if you aren’t paying attention, they just bought 3 acres of prime land in Placencia to develop restaurants, gift shops and a hotel. Which will be OWNED by the cruise line.
Yep glad that they are saying No to the cruise ship in Placenica just look at Belize city, is the roads really any better? are the people really benefiting from the cruise ships being there? all I saw was the visitor being put into buses and bused off on tours organized by the ship. So do the visitors every go to any mom and pop restaurant while in the city?, yes the mom and pop that are trying to send their kids to school and make ends meet.
I just think that sometimes you just have to say no and make the right choice in Placencia to keep the beauty.I worked in placencia and did a lot of growing up there, I would hate to see such a beautiful place go to waste. One day i want to take my kids to the spot i had my first snorkle trip and have them enjoy the same awe that i felt when i was swimming in the blue water. I am not saying all tourism is bad but everything has to be in moderation.
I’m an American who loves Belize. Anyone who wants an answer to this needs to do nothing more than visit the tourist village in Belize City. It’s full of unhealthy, overweight, sweating, depressed American’s and their even more depressed teenage children spending money on credit cards they shouldn’t be polluting the Jewel and vastly over consuming. I came to Placencia as backpacker. My wife discovered it as a backpacker by boat up from Punta Gorda. We later bought land to build a simple home on wood posts, maybe solar. Developers (who are rolls royce driving tax criminals – another story) have told us that isn’t fancy enough. The natural beauty, the friendly people, the peacefulness, the remoteness – that will be destroyed. Has Belize City prospered from these visitors? Not the last time I checked. If there was such a market for these visitors why isn’t all of downtown full of shops selling to them? It’s had the opposite effect – a vacuum of money away from Belize City leaving it in desperate poverty and vicious crime.
Again the people of Placencia says no cruise ships then there should be no cruise ships what good is it going to do to these people when the cruise company has a lock down on virtually every aspect of the business how will this benefit the people of Placencia ,if they want to be an eco tourist area then that is what they should be obviously this is a much better route to take for the locals to benefit and the two just cannot mix but as usual the government never wants to listen to their people who are the ones that they should primarily be serving always want to be heavy handed in everything they do if you guys insist on pushing forward on this don’t say that you were not warned because I believe that this will get very ugly.
This is not grass, roots belizeans against expats, they all live together, they work together, some of those expats have been in placencia for over 25 years. They have all worked hard to build the Placencia Peninsula to what it is, a fairly safe, friendly, helpfull, clean, 17 miles of sand.
Yes, there are some for cruiseships, but, they won’t get jobs, the promise of jobs are different than “getting a job”. Cruiseships will put the small hotels out of business, the small resturants, the small gift shops, and then it will trickle up the ladder, people will lose jobs at the airlines, the taxi mans, and, the money spending sail boaters will quit coming there also. Mass tourism and eco-friendly tourism, just to not mix, it lik “oil and wata”, they no mix. AND to build a village within a village, yep they will put a big brick wall and keep all the people from the Placencia Peninsula out, locked, blocked out, and ran out .Everything will be owned by the CRUISESHIP people..
Immafan Ovcruzin , Im a fan of cruising too, but Aruba? Please check the latest statistics about Aruba’s tourism. Americans accounts for 70% of Aruba’s tourism and it has dropped 9% in the last 5 years. Perhaps “The Natalie Halloway Effect” has something to do wth that.
And as for which country is truly the number 1 Murder capital? REMAIN STUPID!