Cruise arrivals boom, overnights drop

There is good news and bad news in the tourism industry tonight. First, the positive, and that is that cruise tourism in Belize is going through the roof. According to a government release, Belize is the fastest growing cruise destination in the Caribbean, with arrivals in the first half of 2002 running forty percent ahead of last year. When the winter season kicks in it is expected that the full year figure will reach two hundred and ninety thousand cruise ship visitors, a massive five hundred percent annual increase. And by 2003 when the full compliment of Carnival, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean ships are making their regular calls here, those numbers are projected to rise to over five hundred thousand arrivals.

But as well as the cruising sector is doing, Belize’s bread and butter–long term, high value, overnight tourism–has suffered significantly in the wake of the September eleventh terror attacks. The Belize Tourism Board has understandably kept the figures close to its chest, but tourist arrivals at the Philip Goldson International Airport have declined by seven point three percent for the first seven months of this year compared to the same period in 2001. The drop from almost ninety-two thousand visitors to just over eighty-five thousand, varied from month to month, ranging from a slight gain in March to a precipitous eighteen percent drop in April. At the beginning of the year B.T.B. officials expressed optimism that despite the post September slowdown in world travel Belize in 2002 would still be able to match the previous year’s figures. With only five months to go this will prove difficult, but not impossible. Industry insiders point to the fact that last year’s arrivals for September through November were so low–due to terrorism and Hurricane Iris–that the last third of 2002 will easily show significant gains. They also look forward to the November inauguration of flights by U.S. Airways, which should generate increased tourism traffic.