President of the Cayman Islands Tourism Association Troy Leacock has said Cayman’s winter season is set to see high visitor numbers, a welcome relief for the recovering tourism industry.
However, Leacock, speaking on the 7 Dec. episode of Cayman Compass Facebook show The Resh Hour, cautioned that immediate steps must be taken to address Cayman’s spike in robberies, the most recent of which happened on Monday at a gas station on Hell Road in West Bay.
“It is one of the most urgent things we need to deal with because it can significantly affect not only the quality of our life but the tourism industry,” Leacock said.
Leacock hastened to add that he did not want to “over-emphasise” the crime situation because it has a way of getting “distorted and expanded from a tourism and visitor experience or perception”.
The community, he added, also has to guard against letting acceptance creep in and letting crimes like these become the norm.
He agreed with Deputy Police Commissioner Kurt Walton’s call, when he appeared on the 30 Nov. episode of The Resh Hour, for the community to come forward and share information on where the guns are and who is committing these crimes.
Leacock pointed out that some people say increases in the cost of living are driving the spike in crime. While he says he does not accept that, he acknowledged that this is an issue.
Positive outlook ahead for industry
Leacock, who owns the Crazy Crab watersports company, said the outlook for the tourism industry is positive and visitor numbers are trending in the right direction.
Although the most recent Department of Tourism visitor-arrival numbers are yet to be released, Leacock said the industry finished October stronger than anticipated.
In most cases, he said, it was better than 2019.
“November [is] traditionally not a particularly strong month but Thanksgiving was exceptionally strong… we’ve just come out of that and we’re definitely seeing now that bookings for December are very strong… we’re very happy but we still have challenges,” he said.
Among those concerns, he said, is staffing.
As the tourism industry waited for the borders to fully reopen and all travel restrictions to drop – which eventually happened in August this year – businesses did not know how to staff their companies because of the uncertainty around travel. As a result, they found themselves in a situation of high bookings with smaller employee complements.
“What we had were businesses that were struggling to respond to the ebbs and flows… the seasonality, as we recovered; like, I really need six staff but I’ve only got four. So, there was almost a certain limitation to the business that we could provide. You saw it in the hotels, you saw it in watersports – to some degree we had more capacity in boats than we had in staff. We had more capacity in rooms than we had in staff,” he said.
However, he said, the industry is hopeful that December will be the first month to see pre-pandemic numbers and revenue, and “we’re preparing to be fully staffed”.
“I’m just hoping the trends continue because the [booking] windows are not showing it for us just yet, but we’re confident. We’re working on that basis, we’re investing on that basis, we’re hiring on that basis, and we’re committed to making that happen,” Leacock said.
When it comes to Caymanian participation and employment within the industry, Leacock said it is not where he would like it to be.
However, he said, it is not necessarily a case of Caymanians not being hired, though there may be pockets of that happening, but “the reality is that the labour pool just isn’t there”.
He chalked it up to two things – Caymanians “are not making enough babies and there aren’t enough Caymanians available to hire”, and the misconception locally about the earning power in the tourism and hospitality industry.
“[You can] earn thousands and thousands of dollars a month right. This perception that that you have to go work in a bank or a law firm or even construction in order to make a good living, raise a family. That’s a misconception and it’s one of the things that we have to overcome in order to attract Caymanians into the industry,” he said.
He said, during COVID, a number of talented Caymanians left the tourism industry and now the industry has to attract even more Caymanians in order to try to make up for those that were lost over that period.
Push for more members
Leacock said CITA is turning a “new chapter” with the new board, which he now leads, and the aim is to grow and diversify the association’s membership.
He announced on the show that CITA has introduced a new fee structure to allow for small and micro-businesses to become members.
“We’re really excited about that because it literally introduces a level for membership dues that has never existed,” he said. “What I’m hoping to do through it is to literally get hundreds of new members. That is an overriding priority… to expand and diversify our membership over the course of the next year,” he said.
He said small and micro-businesses can join for “as little as $150 a year”, depending on their size.
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