5 weeks ago when the Belize Hotel Association gathered for a seminar on cruise tourism, it was with the backdrop of a very different landscape because at that time, hardly anything was known of the Carnival Agreement. Two days after that seminar ended 7NEWS obtained a copy of the contract, and the rest, as they say, is history: the finest details of this defining cruise arrangement have been splayed across every major news outlet, and the secret agreement is freely available on the internet. Today after so much has been said about carnival and cruise tourism in general, The Belize Hotel Association made it clear that you ain't heard nothing yet! The association’s report on the cruise ship impact recommends that unfavorable contracts should be renegotiated, visitation fees should be increased, and reef diving by cruise visitors activities should be halted...and that's only the half of it.
Receiving the recommendation was Tourism Minister Hon. Mark Espat who says the hard line was expected; now the task is to look for a happy medium.
Hon. Mark Espat, Minister of Tourism
“We will be looking at each of the recommendations closely. As you have pointed out, they touch on various areas. I think the big message from our Ministry today is that we welcome the fact that in this day and age the hotel association, as we expect others, are coming forward with their recommendations and so the dialogue is dynamic. We don’t have to extract recommendations from them. They have actually put in a lot of work and energy in coming up with a proposed solutions to some of the challenges are industry faces. I think that’s a positive thing for tourism.”
Alfonso Noble,
Some of the recommendations do seem a bit hard and fast, hardline approaches.
Hon. Mark Espat,
“Well in any process you have individual institutions at the extreme of certain positions. I think that the challenge for our government, for our ministry, is to try and find a middle ground that can maintain the unique product that we have but at the same time that can offer more and more Belizeans a real stake in the tourism industry. I will expect that in the coming weeks and months as we proceed with the updating of our 10 year strategy that we will get recommendations from the cruise industry association, the BTIA, and from the tour guides. At the end of the day, all of this will go into the funnel. Of course we have to look at these recommendations as they match the manifesto commitments that our government has made which is the mandate that we have and hopefully the product at the end of the day will be one that serves the best interest of the country for the next 5 to 10 years.”
The proposals by the BHA have been formally submitted to the BTB and the Tourism industry for their review.
7NEWS produced for broadcast by News Director Jules Vasquez
Edited for the internet by Keith Swift