January 7, 2010
Dear Prime Minister Barrow:
Contrary to what you said on Love FM yesterday morning (6 January, 2010), no one has consulted with Placencia, Seine Bight, Independence, Hopkins, Dangriga, Maya Beach, Riversdale, Punta Negra or PG at all about whether we want cruise ships in this area.
IDB did a consultation in Placencia about what kind of dock we wanted. We clearly told them we wanted a LOCAL dock to accommodate local tour operators and local fishermen. We specifically did not want a big dock — of the kind that could handle cruise ship passengers.
(You can verify this through the BTB’s own media release about this meeting at http://www.belizetourism.org/PressReleases/2009/09/After-Earthquake-Destroys-Pier-Vision-For-Municipal-Pier-And-Plaza-In-The-Making_157.html — note that the release specifically says that people in Placencia want a dock “to enhance Placencia as an overnight tourist destination.”)
Nothing, zip, nada, zero, zed, has ever been said about whether we want cruise ships here. I would venture to guess that 80% of the population of the Placencia Peninsula does not. It will hurt our overnight visitor business to the point of extinction. People come here to ESCAPE from the kinds of places where cruise tourists go. When our bread-and-butter tourists find out cruise ship passengers are here, they’ll stay away in droves, ruining many local businesses, including restaurants, bars, gift shops and grocery stores.
Cruise ship vacations are the very antithesis of why people come to Placencia.
I have already heard from long-standing clients that they won’t come back to Placencia if cruise ships come here. These are sports fishermen who pay US$375 per DAY for one or two people to fish, and then they also pay for lodging, meals, transportation, souvenirs – and taxes, lots of taxes.
As to economic benefit, what good will cruise ships do us? How many cruise ship passengers do you see eating in local restaurants in Belize City? How many actually buy souvenirs? Are the hair braiders making a good living these days? And we all know that you have to pay, and pay well, to get a contract with a cruise ship company to provide tours.
Our local businesses in Placencia mostly do ok on our own, thank you very much. We don’t need to be inundated by people who will create a lot of trash, use the bathroom leaving us with a sewage problem, and buy almost nothing, all the while chasing away the very tourists who have provided us with a very good living, in a sustainable manner.
And how will cruise ships in Placencia help the national economy? Cruise ship passengers spend almost nothing compared to overnight guests, and very few of them come back to become overnight guests. Plus, it’s highly likely that the cost of policing, infrastructure maintenance, garbage disposal, sewage disposal, and upgrading and maintenance of tourism sites will exceed what the government collects in the paltry head tax agreed to by the former government.
This doesn’t even begin to take into account pollution of already stressed Southern waters and our fish and corals, damage to small sites like Lubaantun, Nim Li Punit, Blue Creek Cave, Laughing Bird Caye or the Silks – or the social havoc this will wreak on our young people, as it has in Belize City already.
Having seen with your own eyes the effect of cruise ship tourism on Belize City and Cayo, how can you even think of doing this to Southern Belize?
I have owned a Belize travel agency for over 10 years now. All payments for hotels, tours and transfers are paid by our clients into Belize – we don’t take payments in the US and only bring in enough money to operate on, as the cruise ships and many all-inclusive resorts do. We use local tour guides, we book local hotels and we recommend local restaurants – in Placencia and throughout the country.
And, I can tell you from personal experience that this kind of experience is what a majority of overnight tourists visiting Belize want. They want to get to know real Belizeans, eat at local restaurants and learn something about the Belize culture and its natural wonders. They are not here to sit by a pool all day long drinking frozen daiquiris.
Government is killing the goose that laid the golden egg for LOCAL BELIZEANS. You are an intelligent man – do some reading on the effects of cruise ships and all-inclusive resorts on local communities throughout the world. Do we have to repeat the mistakes of everyone else? Can’t we learn from others? I will be happy to supply a list of reading material if you’d like – all from very reputable sources, including those that document that all-inclusive resorts are on the way out, because that’s not what quality tourists want anymore.
And, doesn’t Belize WANT quality tourists – the ones who benefit us over a long-term period by coming back again and again, rather than one day from a cruise ship or one vacation at an all-inclusive and then on to a new destination?
If I were you, I’d keep a close eye on village council elections this year. They may very well be a predictor of things to come.
Oh, and what about those conflicts of interest we’ve been hearing about with regard to the Placencia dock area and providing services to cruise ship tenders? Dah no so, da nearly so, and inquiring minds would like to know.
Sincerely,
Mary V. Toy
Placencia
P. S. The tourists being brought into Placencia by Marco Caruso are CANADIANS, which is in a different continent than Europe the last time I checked. (They are coming in on Sunwing charters from Alberta.) And, local businesses in Placencia and Seine Beight can hardly be said to be benefiting by their presence because these are ALL-INCLUSIVE packages, so they’re not using Seine Bight or Placencia services. We’re not benefiting from them, just as we won’t benefit from the myriad of all-inclusive resorts this government seems to view as the magic pill that will cure all our economic woes. Curing what is wrong with Belize requires hard work – not a magic pill in the form of cruise ships or mega-resorts. Ask Jack, there are no magic beans.