A month ago, we took you to the opening of Norwegian Cruise Lines' Harvest Caye cruise port off the Placencia Peninsula.
It is 100 million dollar investment in Southern Belize, and a one-of-a-kind destination since it is the only port of call in the country that has a berthing facility for cruise ships. Still, even though it is a big deal, Norwegian made it a point not to invite the local press to the opening - even though we made multiple requests. In the end, we had to paly the role of party crashers and sort of spy on it from afar to show you what the finished development looks like.
Still, we kept pressing, and finally today, after weeks of more requests, NCL finally relented and invited the press to visit the island for a tour. Now, it's been a very long day to cover most of the features, and our news team is still on the road at this hour. But, they've managed to put together a small peek at the trek through Harvest Caye. We'll have our full story for you in tomorrow's newscast, with all the bells and whistles that island has. But for tonight, we have a portion of our interview with NCL's Colin Murphy discussing what the first 4 weeks of cruise ship calls to the island have been:
Colin Murphy, Senior VP - NCL
"Well it's been a lot of fun and a long project. I think we first started looking for islands in Belize in 2012. I believe we bought the island in 2013 and we started construction in April of 2014. From where we started we created this in 31 months. Which I think is a testament to everybody that's work on it really."
Daniel Ortiz, 7News
"What has it been like for the guests experience and what is the normal traffic per day?"
Colin Murphy, Senior VP - NCL
"The traffic depends on the size of the ship. We have two sizes of ship; the Norwegian Dawn for example has 2,500 passengers and the Norwegian Getaway would have 4,500. Actually the first call of the Getaway was 4,900 with 1,000 kids. So two ships at 2,500 and the Getaway at 4,500-4,900. I am incredible proud of the team what we created here. So we, Belize Island Holdings Ltd., which is our operating company has 230 full time staff. We have Belizeans working on the island. We also have some in our offices on Malacate. Our food and beverage concession, Provisions Belize, Mr. Bowen has another 130 and probably there is another 50 in the retail program. So there is close to 400 locals working on the island and of course that doesn't include tour guides and bus drivers and people that work at the sites where we take everybody. So we think that's quiet a multiple. So there is 400 direct and probably I would say 1200-1500 indirect."
Daniel Ortiz, 7News
"Give us an overview of the facilities and what are some of the features that have been very well received by those guests?"
Colin Murphy, Senior VP - NCL
"I can't say that everything has been well received. When I'm here I'm usually the only guy that walk around the island and I talk to our passengers and I guess that I speaks to 1000 passengers a day and the response has been overwhelm positive. I hear comments like "best port ever," "Best port on this itinerary, wish we had more time." So it's been overwhelm a positive reaction from our passengers."
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