Cruise ships cancel due to Wilma

Hurricane Wilma did not make landfall in Belize, but it did hit us in terms of tourism revenue when cruise ships stayed away. Jacqueline Woods spoke with a representative from the Belize Tourism Board today to find out what kind of damage was done.

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
This week five cruise ships were scheduled to arrive in Belize?s port, however, only one arrived on Tuesday. The cancellations were due to the threat of hurricane Wilma in the Caribbean. Exactly how much revenue was lost will not be known until two months, but the numbers certainly will not be good.

Lloyd Enriquez, Registrar of Hotels/Tourist Accommodation
?A study done a couple of years, which is quite outdated at this time, pegged that figure around fifty U.S. per passenger. Since that time, there has been quite a bit of infrastructural development, quite a bit of better shopping put in place in Belize. Belize is known primarily as a tour port, a tour port of call. People who come here to Belize, they do more tours rather than shopping. Cayman and a lot of the other destinations are known more as shopping ports. But we?re still trying to do that study right now and as far as I know, within the next couple months we should have some more definitive figures from the revenue generated in the cruise sector.?

With six more weeks until this unusually active hurricane season officially ends, how concerned are the folks in the tourism industry that there might further interruptions? Lloyd Enriquez is the Registrar of Hotels and Tourist Accommodation.

Lloyd Enriquez
?Well definitely we have, in terms of cruise for instance, the figures will be down about five percent from last year. We have five percent less passengers calling on Belize this year in 2005 than they did in 2004, which is the first time since 1998 that we are ever going to see a decrease in the number of passengers calling on Belize. In terms of the overnight sector, fortunately, we haven?t been affected too much but this hurricane Wilma may have some implications and that will?we?ll have some indication of that in a month or so when we look at our bookings and the revenues generated in the our hotels sector.?

Jacqueline Woods for News Five

The tourism industry is not the only sector affected by Wilma; the Corozal Free Zone has announced that it will be closed on Friday due to the expected inclement weather in Northern Belize and Quintana Roo.