The Belize Tourism Industry Association is at odds with one of its biggest members, the Belize Water Taxi Association and the fight is for control of the Marine Terminal at the foot of the Swing Bridge. From the early 90's BTIA has been given a lease to run and collect fees for the Marine Terminal as one of the organization's main revenue sources. But those days are coming to and end as the Caye Caulker Water Taxi Association has asked to be the one granted a lease to the terminal. Now this has put the partner organizations at odds and the BTIA says it's not only losing a friend, it's losing its breadbasket.
Andrew Godoy, BTIA Executive Director
"The BTIA does receive revenue from the Marine Terminal. In fact that is one of the reasons why the facility was leased to BTIA ten years ago, so that we could generate revenues for sustainability purposes. Certainly as we are getting stronger, we need to find alternative ways of generating revenues. We don't foresee or think that the agreement with the Water Taxi will come into effect immediately and if so then we've not been advised of that as yet."
Alfonso Noble,
However it will seem that having given BTIA the lease for this Marine Terminal, it seems like a scalping kind of deal, that you are scalping off these people because you are given the lease for minimal fee and then you charge these exorbitant fees to them.
Andrew Godoy,
"What happened with the lease, as I had mentioned, is that the whole purpose of the facility, and giving BTIA the lease at such a low cost annual agreement, was the fact that it was supposed to be a source of income for BTIA so that we could in turn manage the facility to make monies off the facility for sustainability purposes. We're the largest tourism umbrella organization and so we have to receive revenues, we are a non-profit organization."
The current lease agreement with the BTIA expires in 2006.
