More Than 1 Million Visitors Expected this Season

Valdemar Andrade

According to Andrade, the various cruise lines are now following a similar protocol as that being followed by Belize.

Valdemar Andrade, Director of Cruise, B.T.B.

“It comes in the tens of thousands of dollars when they have to do that. So we decided then what we would do is only board the public health officer at English along with the pilot to be able to clear the health issues because that is the major issue here; that we protect our people from any incident of Ebola. However, the ships have also put in place a new health procedure at their points of embarkation—whether it is Miami, Texas, Houston—with a health questionnaire that they are doing right now which has the same precautions that we have in terms of the countries that they are avoiding from embarking the ship and also with respect to the thirty-day incubation period. And so the health officer, once he gets on board, basically has access to those health questionnaires, he has access to all the maritime health information and also the manifest is sent twenty-four hours in advance so they can scrutinize well before they get onboard to be able to clear the ship. So he or she clears through the channel and the boarding party boards at the regular point at the Belize City Harbor where they come in. So as of today, we were able to normalize the ships getting in on time and being cleared on time.”

The upcoming high season is projected to be the highest in cruise arrivals.  It is expected that a little under a million visitors will be arriving in the Jewel during the peak of the season.