Yesterday, we showed you the local launch of multimillion dollar mega project at the Harvest Caye Cruise Port. The event also gave us an opportunity to ask Norwegian Executives about issues related to the project. The first is that most of the NCL Cruise ships, which used to call in Belize City, will now make that port call at Harvest Caye when it opens for business in the third week of November 2016.
Viewers will remember that this wasn't the original plan when the project was first tabled back in 2013. When we asked the NCL executives about it, they told us that the change will allow for new cruise companies to fill the vacant slots in the Belize City Cruise calendar that they will leave behind:
Daniel Ortiz
"Will the Norwegian cruise company be bringing cruise ships exclusively to Harvest Caye once this project opens?"
Colin Murphy, V.P., Destination Development, NCL
"Well I think I just answered that, I mean the majority of our ships will be going to harvest caye yes. But we will have some ships to Belize City."
Daniel Ortiz
"So then sir, how would you answer that you can't say its true economic benefits for the country if you transpose that economic benefit from Belize City to the south? The equation, there hasn't been an increase, you just simply moved the benefits that Belize City would had have."
Colin Murphy, V.P., Destination Development, NCL
"I think you don't understand the cruise industry. You're not understanding this business. You are capacity constrained today, you can't get any more ships into Belize City. We had a town hall meeting the other day in Belize City and there was a new entrance into the market. MSE cruise line for European cruise line who's coming to Belize for the first time and is anxious to come in behind us to replace our ships. So you are capacity constrained right now, you have other cruise lines that want to come and cannot."
Daniel Ortiz
"The projected job offers that will be available for local Belizeans is 510, in the original press release when the project was just introduced, the numbers were 1000 and then in the press conference I think one of the NCL persons said 1200. What's the difference...?"
Colin Murphy, V.P., Destination Development, NCL
"I'm dying to answer that but you know, to be honest with you, you need to pay attention to the numbers. What we originally said was that we were going to hire 200 people. I think it was 200, ourselves, we were going to hire, and then something called a multiplier effect. So we hire 200 people, they will take that money and they will use it and spend other in the country and create jobs for other people. So they'll multiply, it's not my number, it's a number, if you look at the economic impacts, that is in the cruise industry, it's specifically done in Belize. There's a multiplier of 5, so if you have 100 jobs directly on the cruise industry, they're saying the multiplier is 5 and that will create, so we said 200 with the multiplier of 5."
Murphy also made the point that "1 or 2" Norwegian cruise ships will still call in Belize City. His suggestion of the interests from new cruise companies was reiterated by Tourism Minister Manuel Heredia Jr.
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