Cruise visitors will not increase this year

It doesn’t fully qualify as bad news, but in the booming industry it’s about as close as we get. That news is that due to several bankruptcies of Florida based cruise lines, the number of cruise passengers arriving in Belize this year is not expected to grow. Both Premier and Commodore have shut down their operations and that means that instead of a forty-percent increase in traffic projected for 2001, we will be lucky to match last year’s total of fifty-six thousand. That figure, it may be recalled, represented a two hundred percent increase over 1999 and prompted an unprecedented optimism among officials and shore based tour operators. At present the only major line calling regularly in Belize is NCL with a seventeen hundred passenger ship docking every Wednesday through April. Things will begin to rapidly turn around come November, however, as the twenty-six hundred passenger Carnival Spirit, will begin weekly visits along with the twenty-three hundred passenger Norwegian Sun. With a little luck all these visitors will disembark at the much-anticipated Tourism Village at Fort Point.

In related news, Belizean tourism officials along with private sector representatives are maintaining a strong presence at this year’s ITB travel trade show in Berlin. The ITB is the biggest tourism show in Europe and our manning of a booth there is part of an effort to diversify the source of visitors to Belize. At present the vast majority of tourists to Belize come from North America and travel during the winter and spring. Europeans, who tend to travel in the summer, would provide a welcome boost to what tends to be a slower time of year.