Like many of the islands in the region, Dominica has placed great emphasis on cruise tourism, while some have pumped more and more money into the sector hoping to see the arrivals continue to rise annually. This to them is a sign showing that the sector is experiencing regular growth, but is it?
It is not that I’m saying the cruise tourism industry is not vital and that the countries of the region should not keep their programme as fit as possible to capitalize. I believe, however, that the emphasis is a bit off balance especially when one looks at what goes into stay over visitors.
These are the visitors who stay and are more likely to spend much more than cruise visitors. But there seems to be no real sense of urgency in dealing with such a matter, and it seems like everyone is out for a quick buck during the cruise season.
The idea should be for tourism to have all its parts working in unison to create one well-oiled and smoothly running plant that offers much more than we have to give up in order to make the industry successful and not to the detriment of certain key elements of the country.
It’s obvious that we are not seeing the balance that would lead cruise visitors to return as stay over visitors and shouldn’t his be a set plan put together by tourism stakeholders for crying out loud?