Regulating the Cruise Ship Industry in the Caribbean´s Best Interest

Cruise ship tourism is increasingly being promoted by Caribbean tourism officials as evidence of larger numbers of tourist arrivals to many countries in the region.

In some cases, pointing to larger numbers of cruise passengers is the plaster that covers a growing sore of decreasing airline passengers and lower hotel occupancy.

But, while cruise ship tourism is a means of adding to the money earners for Caribbean economies, and particularly for small vendors and taxi drivers, new initiatives for its regulation and should be launched to ensure that the region gets a fair share of the huge profits of the industry, and also to protect the environment.

In the round of industries that have been created around Caribbean resources to enrich and empower foreign multi-nationals and the foreign governments to which they pay taxes, Cruise Ship tourism is a recent addition.

The industry is generating hundreds of millions of dollars in profits every year by bringing passengers through the Caribbean Sea and to ports of Caribbean countries, but the revenues to Caribbean governments and the Caribbean people are miniscule by comparison.

Carnival, one of the top cruise operators, has revealed a 40 percent increase in net income to $735 million up to May 31 this year over the same period last year. Its total revenue for the first five months of this year was given as $4.92 billion, a rise of 16 percent over last year.

Its rival in the region, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd, reported $290 million in net income in the first half of 2005, a rise of 33 percent over the same period last year and revenue growth of 8 percent to $2.2 billion.

Now, it is true that these revenues were not made in the Caribbean alone; both cruise lines operate their ships outside of the region, principally in the summer period when hurricanes and tropical storms tend to plague the area.

Nonetheless, a significant portion of the income was made from cruises in the Caribbean Sea and by calling at Caribbean ports. And, the Caribbean received a small fraction of that income, mainly from very low port charges, small disembarkation taxes on passengers (which are passed on to the tourist) who opt to come off the ships in some ports, and from purchases made on shore largely from small vendors. It should be noted that no environmental levy is paid to help the Caribbean to deal effectively with degradation.

By the same token, Caribbean countries have had to invest heavily in providing port facilities to accommodate cruise ships which are becoming larger.

Now, with the ships growing even larger to carry more passengers and earn extra income, Caribbean countries will be expected to invest even more of their scarce dollars on deeper harbors and expanded port facilities if they wish to compete with each other for the business.

In the meantime, cruise ships that dump sewage at sea and dispose of garbage in some ports are contributing to pollution, erosion of reefs, degradation of coastal areas and marine life. It may be sometime before the effects of deeper dredging of harbors will be known.

Within the next decade, the Caribbean will pay a high price for the abuse of the natural environment.

As the cruise ship industry grows bigger, increasingly it is offering on board anything – including tee-shirts – that can be bought on land, and Caribbean ports are being used only as a convenience for sailing the still beautiful waters of the Caribbean Sea. Our countries and our people are almost incidental to the enterprise of profits for the operators and tax revenues for their home countries.

Each of the States of the region has an exclusive economic zone of 250 miles from their coastlines. In many cases, given the proximity of Caribbean countries, to each other, there is overlap and equidistant rules come into play. But, the point is that cruise ships ply their trade in Caribbean territory. They should, therefore, be subject to rules in which the Caribbean has some say.

In the so-called competition game, the operators have won and the Caribbean has lost.

This is why there is need now for Caribbean governments, acting collectively and harmoniously, to implement identical legislation and enforcement machinery for regulating the cruise ship industry and protecting the environment.