Almost two thirds of the respondents to last week’s cayCompass.com online poll think cruise ship tourism is vitally important to Cayman’s economy.
Of the 598 respondents, 396 of them – 66.2 per cent – said cruise ship tourism is vitally important to the economy.
“I hold fast thus far to the concept that cruise ship tourism is very important to our land for a few reasons,” said one person. “These include: The/tax paid per head to arrive; the money, although sometimes small, spent on tours, food, T-shirts, jewellery, etc; and the benefits of tourists seeing the place and wanting to spend additional time here on next vacation.
“We have seen many stores close in town that have been open for years, like the store Far Away Places,” said someone else. “Because of the sagging economy, cruise ships play a vital part of this. Many of the guests that I meet at the resort where I work often tell me that their first experience coming to Cayman was on a cruise ship, then they decide they like the place and come back for a week. So without cruise ship passengers this would never happen.”
“The economy needs all the help it can get,” said another person.
One overseas respondent commented about the lack of a cruise berthing dock in George Town.
“Cruise tourism is vitally important to the economy, but being handicapped, your tenders are too hard for me to do,” the person said. “Plus just older persons have a very hard time with present system; you need a people friendly docking system that we can debark easier.”
Another 137 people – 22.9 per cent – said they thought cruise tourism was somewhat important to the economy. “It’s important, but not as important as stay-over tourism,” said one person. “We should facilitate cruise tourism, but not to the extent that it detracts from our stay-over tourism product.”
“It’s good, but not as important as a lot of people make out and not worth putting a lot more resources into, at least compared to other things like stay-over tourism, crime, education/training, etc.,” said someone else.
“It is somewhat important, but since Caribbean cruising is on the decline, we had better have a back-up plan,” said another respondent.
Forty-eight people – 8 per cent – think cruise tourism is not too important.
“I think it is marginally important to our private sector economy, but it may be very important to the government income,” said one person.
“It just benefits the merchants downtown with their ex-pat salespeople,” said someone else. “There’s no benefit to the rest of the Island.”
Fourteen respondents – 2.4 per cent said cruise tourism wasn’t important at all to Cayman’s economy.
“It’s had its day; time to move on now,” said one of those people.
Only three people – 0.5 per cent – answered ‘I don’t know’ to the question.
Next week’s poll question
How confident are you in the quality of health care provided by Cayman’s Health Services Authority?
Very confident
Somewhat confident
Not too confident
Not confident at all
I don’t know
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