EARLY ON, we had clips from today's press conference announcing the signing of the MOU with Norwegian Cruise Line to build a port in Southern Belize. One sound-byte we missed is an important one: it discusses the impact the Docking facility in southern Belize will have on the Cruise attractions in Belize City.
Belize City has been the center for cruise tourism since its inception. IT may not be the best place in terms of visitor reviews, but it employs many, and, recently, a great deal of investment has been made to upgrade the environs surrounding the Fort Street Tourism village. So will Belize now be abandoned for this new facility in the south with a berthing dock? They say it won't:
Colin Murphy - VP, Destination & Strategic Development,NCL
"With all companies concerned, this is a sgnificance increase in volumes to Belize which means when it results it's like 400% increase in tax revenue to the country. 400% increase in payment to PACT, to preserve and protect the environment - it diversifies the dependence on Belize City so it takes pressure off of Belize City while keeping all the operators in place. One of the concerns that was raised is if everyone from Belize City was going to go down south. One of our competitors have been cancelling cruises because Belize is full, full, full so there up to five ship a day so we don't think it's going to be any impact to the folks in Belize City at all."
Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Labour
"Any scheduled visits in the North as existing - those shall not be diverted just as simple as that. So whatever was scheduled will be maintained and then you go to the south - we won't transfer them. So all this fear that everything was happening and in Belize City it will stop - that's not true."
Laura Esquivel -Frampton - Director of Tourism
"So what do we have to do now? Well we have to be prepared and we have about 24 months to get prepared for this project and that requires that we will have the suitable infrastructure in place - we will have our capacity limits in place and in fact we will be working with NICH to ensure that we have those capacity limits in place at least for the archaeological sites and with the other park managers for their sites."
As we noted earlier, Harvest Caye will only have a single berthing facility and Norwegian intends to use if 150 days of the year. On other days it will be open to other cruise lines. Tune in tomorrow, for the details of the MOU and the tough questions arising from it…..
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