Government announces referendum on cruise berthing ‘this year’

Cayman voters will have their say on the future of the cruise industry when a long-awaited referendum on cruise berthing will be held at the end of the year, government has announced.

Cabinet has granted approval for a referendum on the controversial issue of whether cruise piers are needed to support the industry, government announced in a short statement Wednesday.

“This decision is based on the need for government to address the ongoing reduction in cruise passenger arrivals and the knock-on effects impacting Caymanian owned businesses and the local economy,” the statement said.

No date has been set for the referendum, but the statement said it is anticipated that the vote will be held before the end of the year.

Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan, who has been pushing for a vote on introducing cruise piers, said in the statement announcing the referendum Wednesday afternoon that in the absence of a definitive decision on the question of cruise berthing “it is near impossible to craft a viable cruise tourism policy that directs the industry over the long term, or to provide any meaningful guidance to those servicing the cruise sector”.

He said consequently, “a core decision from the people of the Cayman Islands is required to facilitate future strategic planning for the cruise industry”.

The previous Progressives government had inked in a deal to build new piers in George Town but that was shelved after a massive public campaign forced a people-initiated referendum on the project.

The referendum itself did not proceed, however, as the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the tourism industry and sidetracked the debate that had gripped the country in the latter part of 2019.

The shops around the pier were shuttered during COVID.The current United People’s Movement government is now reconsidering the merits of cruise piers amid a downturn in visitation culminating in today’s announcement to put the issue to a people’s vote.

Even if there is public support for a port, there would likely need to be a new business case and competitive bid process because of the extent to which the market and the economy has changed since the project was first scoped, prior to the COVID-19 lockdown.

Since cruise ships returned to the Cayman Islands in 2022 following the end of the pandemic, government’s statement said, cruise passenger arrivals have significantly declined “registering 743,394 for the nine-month period that the port was open in 2022 and 1.2 million for the full year in 2023 – the lowest passenger arrivals in over two decades”.

“From January to June 2024, a total of 634,212 cruise passengers arrived aboard 197 ships, which is a further decline of 108,341 passengers compared than the same period in 2023 and 37% less than the corresponding period in 2019,” it added.

Speaking in Parliament last week, Bryan said that cruise calls have continued to drop this year and the “ongoing reduction is a serious concern”.

He said the longer the fall in calls continues it will have “an increasingly negative impact” on the local economy and the predominantly Caymanian businesses that rely on the sector for their livelihoods.

In 2019, a petition triggered a people-initiated referendum to decide on a potential cruise pier. At the time, the project was subject to an intense debate, with critics arguing that Cayman did not need large numbers of cruise tourists, who bring relatively small economic benefits compared to stayover visitors.

Advocates of the piers, including the Progressives government, argued that Cayman would lose cruise visitors if it did not have a pier because of the industry shift to larger ships that do not tender, and that the volume of visitors the cruise industry provides was important for jobs.

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 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.

However, he said the reality of falling cruise calls is a matter of concern.

Asked for comment on Wednesday’s development, Troy Leacock, President of the Cayman Islands Tourism Association, said, “The construction of cruise berths as previously proposed proved to be a hugely divisive issue. It is vital that a carefully and precisely worded referendum provides the opportunity for our people to make a clear and indisputable decision on whatever design and implementation is once again being considered.”