Bryan presses for referendum to decide future of cruise tourism

Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan has renewed his appeal for a cruise pier referendum, saying the country must make a decision about the industry and whether construction of berthing piers will move forward.

“There needs to be a referendum,” Bryan said, speaking with the Cayman Compass on Friday.

The minister said there was no other way to “sugarcoat” the reality the country is now facing, as he said local businesses are feeling the pressure from declining cruise calls.

The cruise industry had a rough start to the year, as nor’westers forced at least 21 ships to bypass Cayman between January and February.

The weather conditions, coupled with the drop in calls, added to the existing burden.

Cayman must decide

Businesses dependent on the cruise industry have appealed for more action from government in the wake of declining cruise calls.

Bryan said he has tried, since taking office in 2021, to signal to the country what was coming.

Opposition Leader Roy McTaggart has accused the government of abandoning the cruise industry.

He said if the cruise sector is going to be “reshaped with fewer passenger numbers, then the Government needs to manage the transition, helping businesses and workers adjust, not just abandoning the sector to the whims of the market”.

McTaggart, in a statement, said the urgency of this work is such “that it cannot wait another year for a new government after the election. It needs action now”.

However, Bryan said he has been in many meetings seeking to encourage more calls.

Bryan said there were even offers to make changes to the law to allow casinos to operate on ships in the evening, which could encourage ships to stay in port longer and allow passengers to spend more time on island.

“Logistically, they said it doesn’t help them because they still needed to get from one port location to the other and they needed the time. They couldn’t increase their speed to make up for it because they would be taxed by new emission fees,” he said.

The reality is that the ship models that cruise companies have moved to means they cannot disembark or embark 6,000-8,000 people by tender in the short period of time they are in harbour, Bryan said.

“They need a pier to make it make financial sense. It’s not that they don’t want to come to the Cayman Islands. It’s just the model that the industry is moving to doesn’t make financial sense, and if it doesn’t [make] any sense, then they are not going to come,” he said.

Bryan was once strongly opposed to piers and objected to the arguments put forward by the former Progressives-led administration on looming cruise challenges when they sought to deliver a berthing project in 2019.

The pandemic, however, changed the industry, Bryan said.

“Rightfully so, the Progressives gave an indication that these are the projections of the future,” and they are coming to pass sooner than even they expected, he said.

The difference from 2019 to today, Bryan said, is that project timelines for cruise companies have sped up since COVID, “and that’s why the numbers are declining”.

Cruise lines used the travel decline during the pandemic to build out the bigger vessels they wanted and transition to their new business model.

“I can’t say to you with any level of confidence it is going to get better without a pier. Now, I’m not here to scare the public into wanting a pier. I am just saying, give me clear directions as your leader what you want me to do,” he said.

Bryan said if the decision is that a pier is not what the community wants, and they accept that the numbers will continue to decline, then “we as government leaders need to prepare for that reality”.

He said the administration will need time to prepare workers who will be negatively affected by the decline in the cruise industry to ensure they have economic opportunity.

“That may mean we will need to tighten up on immigration, because we’re going to have Caymanians out of work. This includes making sure they find [work] in a different industry, whether it’s in the leisure and stayover market or financial services or construction, but you cannot make the necessary moves without a clear direction,” he said.

Different result

In 2019, a petition triggered a people-initiated referendum to decide on a potential cruise pier. With the onset of the COVID pandemic, however, the then Progressives-led government said it did not intend to move ahead with its plans to build a cruise pier in George Town Harbour.

With that announcement, there was no longer a need for a referendum.

Bryan, however, said the country’s voice has to be heard on the matter, because the decline that is happening will not be reversed.

“There needs to be a choice by the people, and it can’t be one that is the government saying ‘we are in support of it’, or ‘we’re against it’,” he said. “The people need to choose whether they want to be in cruise or not. Without a pier, the numbers are going to continue to decline.”

When the topic of berthing piers was first raised, he said, the community was confronted with a lot of different information – “some justified and some not justified”.

At the time, it was logical to come to a conclusion without a referendum that most people were not in favour of the project, he said.

While the opposing voice at the time “was very loud”, he said, “it was not confirmed because we never did have a referendum. But the voice was convincing.”

Bryan said if the question were put to the country today, he thinks the result would be different.

“With a new set of information that the realities of those projections are coming to fruition, I think that we’d have a different viewpoint today,” he said.

Bryan said he knows there will be a section of people who don’t support the cruise industry, and if that is the majority, then the government will have a clear indication.

“That’s how democracy works,” he said.

Cayman can control calls

Bryan said he warned tourism-related business owners not to ramp up to 100% coming out of COVID, because he knew the country would not return to 2019 numbers, nor is that what he wants.

He said that if the country agrees to a pier, however, that does not mean there must be mass tourism.

The country dictates how many ships it will welcome and when, he said.

“Having a pier doesn’t mean that you need to have five ships. You can still limit it, but just make sure they have the opportunity to want to come. That means if you say only one mega ship per day … then that’s all we want. That’s the load factor of what we’re willing to accept that doesn’t disturb the local community,” he said.

Small ships and luxury vessels cannot sustain the industry that the island has created, he said, and the economic strain being felt now will worsen.

“It’s just not enough, and they’re not going to come often enough. You may get one luxury ship if you’re lucky, once every two weeks, and the average for those luxury ships is 1,000 people,” he said.

Chris Kirkconnell, vice president of operations at Kirk Freeport, shared the minister’s concern.

He said that if the island wants to look at increasing numbers, then that “is probably going to involve that conversation about some kind of berthing for the cruise lines”.

He said he is hopeful the addition of new cruises next year, such as Virgin Cruises, will bring a much-needed injection of business for the industry.

“From what we’re seeing, [they] should have a good demographic and something that would be on par and in line with what Cayman is looking for,” he said.

“But there are fewer and fewer additions to the cruise industry that don’t require berthing.”