Cruise industry chief: Passengers want unique Cayman experience

Experiences that are quintessentially and uniquely Caymanian rather than simply sun, sea and sand are what cruise passengers will be looking for when ships return to Cayman’s shores, cruise industry leader Michele Paige says.

While cruise ships have not anchored in Cayman for almost two years, talks are under way to bring them back, as government and industry players try to reach a consensus on how to reintroduce cruise passengers safely to the islands in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.

Last week, eight representatives from cruise lines and the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association visited Grand Cayman to meet with government and tourism officials, as well as local tour operators and business owners, to lay the groundwork for bringing cruise ships back to Cayman – which the cruise lines say is the only Caribbean destination on their itineraries that has yet to reopen.

Paige, president of the FCCA, says the types of excursions, activities and offerings that were available to tourists before the pandemic may need to change when cruise returns here, in part to place less pressure on places where there was a high volume of visitors in the past – like the Stingray Sandbar, for example – and to enable local operators to make more revenue from the visitors than they were making pre-COVID.

Offering services, products and experiences that are entirely Caymanian, rather than Caribbean, would showcase what makes these islands special and unique, she says.

Cayman Brac and Little Cayman may be untapped destinations for higher spending cruise passengers, who would be willing to pay more for an experience that most of their fellow passengers would not be having. Therefore, taking a quick flight to those islands and spending a few hours there before flying back to board the ship is an option worth considering, Paige says.

“A lot of people don’t know anything about Little Cayman or Cayman Brac,” she says, adding that the local culture and local people are what make a destination most memorable for travellers.

“Basically, it’s looking at everything that makes you special, and just putting it out there, telling a story, packaging it,” she says. “Yes, they can be very exclusive tours… but then there’s the people, whether it’s in Cayman Brac or George Town. [Passengers] want to meet the people and hear their stories, and talk to the fishermen… it’s part of that experience. And that’s what is missing right now. Yes, you’re a very exclusive destination, but you need to bring it back to who you are.”

One of the items under discussion during the talks was how tour operators and water-sports businesses in Cayman can make more revenue from cruise passengers who book their excursions through the cruise company, which then takes a large percentage of that revenue.

Paige says by offering more expensive options to high-value customers, both the cruise lines and the local operators can benefit.

With each ship carrying a wide variety of passengers on board – some who pay less for inside cabins, and others who spend large amounts on suites – “How do you have something for everybody?” she asks.

“It’s about having options,” she says, adding that among those options is providing services and modes of transportation to a variety of sites that are accessible to all kinds of customers from the ships. “If we don’t want to overtax any one resource in the Cayman Islands, how do we spread out the passengers? How do we make sure that everyone in Cayman is feeding off cruise tourism?” she says.

Those are the types of questions that the government and local operators will be considering as the prospect of cruise tourism returning to Cayman comes nearer to reality.

At the meetings held last week, Paige says the government had presented a number of different initiatives, such as new attractions, making existing sites “more impactful, more interactive”, and having more venues within a single attraction that make it as compelling for a grandmother as for a toddler.

Using the analogy of a trip to Egypt, Paige says, “When you go to see the pyramids, and you want an exclusive experience, it’s a much higher cost than just walking around the pyramids. How do you have an exclusive interactive experience at a very high price point?”

“People are willing to pay,” she adds, “but they want to get what they’re paying for.”

Paige says passengers who have positive experiences on their cruises tend to return as stayover visitors.

“It’s not just about what the [cruise] passengers and crew spend… They come back. Those are your hotel guests. Without a shadow of a doubt, within six to 12 months, they’re in your hotels. So when you lose the cruise industry, you lose [those hotel guests].”

She adds, “The cruise industry plays a role in the Cayman Islands tourism industry. The cruise industry has to respect what the Cayman Islands wants in terms of the cruise industry product. So it’s a respect back and forth, and that’s where we are right now, discussing that respect.”

She describes the relationship between Cayman and the cruise industry as a “blank canvas” that can be painted in a way that benefits and suits both parties.