Cruise business is expected to see a further boost in 2017, according to Jeffrey Roach, CEO of the Bridgetown Cruise Terminals.
Coming off a high 2016, he told The Barbados Advocate that, “In 2017 we expect an even better performance based on what we see in terms of an increase in visitors and ships calling. 2017 should be an improvement on 2016.”
Roach explained that the projection of a positive 2017 in cruise business is due to new ships that made their inaugural visit in 2016 and will be coming again in 2017. “We also have a few large vessels that will be coming, for example recently we had three vessels in port that carried over nine thousand passengers. There are also additional prospects for new traffic into Barbados,” he revealed.
The cruise official recounted that, “In 2016 the country did well, we had an increase in a number of cruise ship calls compared to 2015 as well as passengers. Overall passenger calls for Barbados were 730 000 in 2016’s calendar year compared to 712 000 for 2015. There has been a 2. 6 increase in passengers. We have more ships calling on Barbados, we had 424 ship calls for 2016 compared to 394 in 2015. There was an improvement in 2016 overall.”
Recently, Eddy Abed, Head of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) made the statements that store owners were so desperate to get cruise ship passenger business that they are willing to spend money on a shuttle system.
However, Roach does not believe this system is practical. “On Monday we had nine thousand, how many shuttles will you need? Also there was talk about having the tours that leave from the port, leave from Bridgetown. Where in Bridgetown will you marshal all of those buses? There is no place in Bridgetown to do that, certainly not where main shopping areas are,” he contended.
“My suggestion is to make Bridgetown alive and guests will go... We need to tell our story, people go to Puerto Rico and go to Old San Juan, because you hear about that attraction. We need to tell our Barbadian story, quite frankly most Barbadians don’t know about Bridgetown, we have a UNESCO world heritage site that has not been properly leveraged, it needs to be marketed and sell it... We have not done that. Where is the signage to tell you about the UNESCO world heritage site and the importance of places etc.?
We need to leverage Bridgetown’s value, we have parliament, jubilee gardens etc., that would interest people, Bridgetown has to be inviting to locals not just for work and it will be inviting to guests,” he asserted. (NB)
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