Tour operator takes on mgmt. at Tourism Village
Tonight, after several months of smooth sailing, the cruise ship industry is still grappling with its first major obstacle since the first call to port. News 5’s Jacqueline Woods has the story.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Today, it was abnormally quiet at the Tourism Village’s dock, but it wasn’t because there wasn’t a cruise ship in port. In fact, the two thousand and four hundred passengers from the Carnival Cruise Line were in town, but today cruise ship tenders took them to the Radisson Pier. Why? According to Shore Excursion Manager, Michael Garbutt of Novelo’s BELITUR tour operators, he received two letters from the owner of the Tourism Village, Michael Feinstein, warning him that he is no longer allowed to operate from that establishment. This morning, Garbutt, who is the local tour operator for Carnival Cruise Ships, arrived at the village to receive the tourists, but was told he had to leave the compound.
Michael Garbutt, Shore Excursion Manager, BELITUR
“Well most unfortunately we’ve been having a little problem with the cruise ship village. A number of people, including myself, have been asked not to go back to the cruise ship village. As a matter of fact, I myself have been removed from the cruise ship village by their security. My job is to see that these people who come on shore from these cruise ships enjoy their visit. And if can’t perform my job, then these people won’t enjoy their visit and in return we won’t be seeing these cruise ships visiting Belize.”
Garbutt says he has replied to the letters by fax to Feinstein to find out why he is being denied access to the village, but he says he has not received any replies. Garbutt says the Belize Tourist Board has been looking into the matter, but the issue could not be resolved before the arrival of the two scheduled cruise ships today.
Michael Garbutt
“As a matter of fact Belitur have eight cruise ships that it brings into this country. And we have to do our duty, and there is no way we could tell these people, although you’re docked out there you can’t come on shore. So we got to do our job, and if it means coming out here today to do this, then that’s what we have to do.”
While other tour operators were affected by the action, News 5 understands that the issue is solely between Mike Williams of Eurocaribe and Michael Feinstein. According to reliable sources, the men haven’t seen eye to eye on several issues for some time. Eurocaribe did not wish to publicly comment on the matter, but others did.
Reginald Trapp, Tour Operator
“For the last three weeks things have been very difficult with us. About a little more than half of us were able to work over the last three weeks, and it seems to be that we’re getting some bad publicity aboard ship. That’s what it seems like to us, we don’t have any concrete facts, but most of the people that come off the ship tell us that they do not know that they’re taxi’s here. They’re surprised that they can have private people that will take them to the different destinations, so things have been bad with us. But like our president says, we don’t want to get in the middle of the big cats fighting, we don’t want to get in the middle of that and then get blamed for anything. All we know is that we want to work. We have our families to feed and we need to work. We were promised that no monopoly would take place and that we would have work, but right now it’s not looking good.”
Lawhoma Aguallo, Secretary, Cruise Ship Taxi Assoc.
“I came to work in my office uniform, getting ready for the tourists when they come in. And when I went out to the tourist village, I don’t know what happen, but they sent me around this side by Radisson. When I came over here, there were busses all over the place and all our taxi members coming out wondering what happened. Everybody was puzzled, we don’t know what was the problem. When I came out, I came out to meet myself out of the door, I don’t have my job, I don’t know what Feinstein or whosoever did what. But apparently its going to be affecting us because now the tourists are coming in and we don’t know what to do. We’re the taxi union and it’s gonna break down apparently into pieces.”
The smaller vendors who pay up to a one thousand dollars to operate in the tourism village, had no choice but to quickly gather some of their items and set up an impromptu stall in front of the Radisson pier to make some money for the day. According to B.T.B.’s, Deputy Director of Finance and Administration, Evan Tillett, they are aware of the situation and are working to get the matter settled as soon as possible.
Evan Tillett, Deputy Director, BTB
“We are currently in the process of reviewing the concerns of all parties involved and hopefully we can reach some amicable resolution to this problem as quickly as possible.”
Some of the tourists did walk over to the tourism village to shop. Store owners there hope that by the next time another cruise ship arrives in Belize, which we understand to be on Tuesday, the problem between cruise line agent Eurocaribe and the management of the Belize Tourism Village would have been resolved. Jacqueline Woods reporting for News 5.
Late this evening, the management of the Belize Tourism Village sent News 5 a fax commenting on the situation. According to that release, the action by the tour operators is contrary to the agreement between the Belize Tourism Village Limited and the Government of Belize and any inconvenience caused in regretted.
