BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – DESPITE recent increases in the cruise sector, Minister of Tourism, Hon. Lindsay Grant has described its development as a work in progress and is cautious about his expectations.
Asked recently about his vision for the sector over the next five years, the Minister said tourism officials do not want to bring too many cruise ships at any given time if the local resources cannot meet the demands.
He pointed to last week’s arrival of five ships - carrying with them more than 16,000 passengers - was a test of the island’s resources - both human and financial. He said coming out of that experience, a post-mortem would have to be conducted to ascertain which areas would need strengthening.
“I would not want to put a number on the visitors that we would want to bring, [however] what I would say is that we can’t bring the numbers and [don’t] have the resources to satisfy the numbers. We shouldn’t do it,” Grant noted.
The cruise sector within the local tourism industry has been booming over the years, with the Federation’s officials setting new annual targets.
Just last year, the Ministry of Tourism and the St. Kitts Tourism Authority set a target of one million cruise passengers, with figures reaching just under that mark.
And this year, officials are targeting the arrival of more than one million passengers as a result of increased calls to the island.
Questioned about the possibility of the increase in the cruise sector supplementing the stagnation in area of stayover visitors, Grant noted that the sector would not necessarily provide the same amount of revenue. But it is doing what many in the Tourism Department had come to expect from it.
Minister Grant suggested that brand awareness is what has accounted for the increasing number of cruise ship calls to St. Kitts.
This, he noted, has been a work in progress, adding that more work needs to be put in motion in order to keep the St. Kitts brand in the public domain.
“We have done a significant amount of marketing all across the world so that people would understand that St. Kitts is open for business.”
The new cruise pier, when completed, is expected to further increase the number of ships docking on the islands.
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