by Brian Major
Last updated: 8:15 AM ET, Wed July 24, 2024
Cruise tourism to the Caribbean and the Bahamas is sailing
along at record levels, but not every regional destination is receiving
its share of the wealth.
The Cayman Islands is struggling to contend with a fast-changing
cruise environment that frowns on transporting guests ashore via tender boats fewer
than four years after local voters defeated a referendum to construct the
countrys first fixed cruise ship pier.
Cayman Islands cruise ship visits have declined sharply since
2022. The downward trend is expected to continue, with visits to the destination
declining by half in the next two years as cruise lines opt for ever-larger
ships that require fixed piers.
Using cruise line data, Cayman Ministry of Tourism officials
expect the country to host 746,000 cruise ship visitors this year, half of the
1.4 million who sailed to the destination in 2022, according to a June 10
Cayman Compass report.
The Cayman Islands expected 2024 cruise arrivals are 60
percent below the 1.84 million shipboard passengers who visited in 2019.
Cruise-reliant Cayman Islands businesses are feeling the impact. Chris Kirkconnell, vice president of operations at jewelry retailer Kirk Freeport, which has three outlets in the capital George Town, says hes pivoted his business model and staff levels in response to the decline in cruise traffic.
Everyone in the [local cruise tourism] industry saw the
reduction coming and the cruise lines warned that it was going to happen,
Kirkconnell told the Cayman Compass. Covid-related global travel shutdowns, he
said, hastened the process.
The Cayman Islands was also among the last Caribbean
destinations to re-open to cruise ship travelers post-pandemic, resuming calls
in March of 2022.
Declining cruise calls in the Cayman Islands are the reality, said Kenneth Bryan, the Cayman Islands tourism minister. (Photo by Brian Major)
In 2020, Cayman residents voted down a referendum to build a fixed cruise pier in
George Town, citing environmental concerns tied in part to dredging of the harbor.
Officials in the current administration have publicly vowed not to construct a cruise
pier.
For their part, the largest cruise operators say they will
continue to sail away from Caribbean destinations that lack fixed piers and port
facilities.
We do not like to tender, said Wendy McDonald, Royal
Caribbean Internationals regional vice president, government relations, during
a June seminar at the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) Caribbean
Week conference.
The bigger our ships grow [lessens] the amount of time you
have in the destination or [to travel to] ports in other destinations, McDonald
said, because its difficult to tender 3,000 people from a ship that carries
6,500 people. By the time we get the [disembarked] its time to get back on the
ship.
[Tendering] is not the safest means of getting our guests
on and off the ship, added Marie McKenzie, Carnival Corp.s senior vice
president, government and destination affairs.
Even if we can [tender], the weather can challenge that
opportunity, she said. So we have to cancel the call and we have guests that
are unhappy on the ship. There are many reasons [not to tender].
McKenzie added that even smaller, non mega-vessel operators
across many cruise fleets, including ancillary brands of Royal Caribbean and
Carnival, are circumspect when piers are removed from the guest landing equation.
Even with the smaller ships, there are challenges that
come into play, she said. Its just not an efficient operation. If we can
choose an itinerary that does not have tendering, regardless of the size of the
ship, it is our preference to do that.
Cruise operators have long encouraged Cayman Islands officials
to build a cruise pier in George Town and strongly supported the defeated 2020 referendum.
The Cayman Islands geographic location makes the destination a key port of
call on western Caribbean itineraries.
Kenneth Bryan, the Cayman Islands tourism minister,
admitted in a 2022 Cayman Islands Tourism Association gathering that cruise
calls were set to decline, saying reductions in visits by Royal Caribbean and
Carnival were the reality and it is not something we should be surprised
about.
Bryan said his government has held discussions with other
cruise operators, including MSC Cruises, about calling at the destination and
anticipated current cruise schedules would be maintained.
My recommendation to the Minister is to move [a new cruise
pier referendum] along as quickly as possible so that we can get a pier built
in Cayman, McDonald of Royal Caribbean said as Bryan sat in the audience at
the June CTO gathering.
So that when Jamaica
and other islands ask, Why arent we getting more calls? we can say, Its
coming, she said. Its all about the tendering process.
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