And while all eyes will be on the Tourism Village tomorrow morning, The Belize Cruise Ship Industry says all this is symptomatic of mounting problems in the tourism industry.
The BCIA claims to represent tour operators, shipping agents, and other stakeholders. These are the same people who President Tom Greenwood says are to blame and today called them to the table.
Tom Greenwood, President BCIA
“I think that I can safely say that for the past year we have seen failure on part of the public and private sector. The public sector in terms of arbitrary decisions like raising site fees without consultations. We only now just finished seeing the CZMAI, which I supported personally as the proper body to take care of Goff’s Caye, installing a $20 fee. What happened is that nobody went to Goff’s Caye and everyone is going elsewhere because you try to pay $20 out of a tiny fee being paid to you to take people there and that is what I mean about the public sector failing. We all must learn to consult in order to take this industry forward. And the private sector of course is so busy quarreling with each other and being greedy with what’s happening that is the end result. We really need to get our act together.”
“The parties concerned have got to come to the table; we’ve got to come to the conference table. I need to see the government, that group of course will be the Belize Tourism Board who I think will be the appropriate body, I need to see Tour-Tran, Novelo’s Bus Line, the two big operators Cruise Solutions and Beli-Tur and the shipping agents come to the table and let’s get this thing sorted out now. Let’s do whatever is necessary to keep Belize on the good footing that it was. Right now we are not on good footing where tours are concerned for the cruise ship industry.”
We note that Cruise Solutions which is one of the major tour operators is not a member of the BCIA. And as for BCIA's allegation that Carnival pulled one of its ships from Belize due to a lack of ground transportation, well the local agent for Carnival says that is untrue. Instead the ship which is the "Spirit" has been replaced by its sister ship the "Legend."