Cancellation Shortfalls Can Be Offset By Larger Ships

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Clik here to view.Despite the fact that guest experiences aren’t ideally what they should be for visitors remaining in Belize City; the Belize Tourism Board is drawing on know-how from experts abroad to devise better strategies for improving the quality of the brief stay.  As for the vacuum created in the wake of the cancellation, Andrade says bigger ships calling on Belize can offset that shortfall.

Valdemar Andrade, Director of Destination Planning & Cruise, B.T.B.

“So, yes, as an entity and as a government we recognize that there are some issues with the guest experience in Belize but we are also working with the Belize City Council for the entire Belize City to become a key destination and looking at other products that we could deliver in Belize so that people could understand that in Belize we have great people, we have great products, we have a great culinary experience.  We have much more to offer so we are partnering not only internally but externally with the cruise lines and getting their expertise on what are being done in other destinations that we can do here and do better so that our brand is number one.”

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Valdemar Andrade

Reporter

“How will the tourism industry fill those gaps that are now in the schedule?”

Valdemar Andrade

“Let me tell you, basically, you can’t look at it as a gap because we have been actively working, remember, deployment is an eighteen-month cycle or a two-year cycle with some cruise lines and so we have been working two years before this to ensure that we have a certain deployment for 2016.  And so for this year alone we are working specifically with three cruise lines to bring them onboard and I have to say that one of them have tripled their calls to Belize.  And so in the end what we look at is the net total, it’s not only calls because remember now, the ships are getting bigger and bigger so we can have less calls.  For example, in 2015, we had a hundred and sixty-four calls and four hundred and eighty-nine thousand passengers but in 2015 we had a hundred and seven calls from Carnival but we still had four hundred and forty-nine thousand passengers so you can see that the size of the ships matter a lot.  So if you remove two ships and give me back a big ship or two big ships then the net benefit is greater.”