EDITORIAL
Making George Town a Lasting Memory
Thursday, May 13, 2004
With the Cayman Islands going through an evolution of sorts in the tourism
industry, there has clearly been a shift, dictated largely by external
circumstances, towards more reliance on cruise ship visitors as a source of
business.
In that context, we therefore need to be giving increased attention to the
facilities and services with which the cruise ship visitors will interact. Any
efforts in this regard will also benefit stay-over visitors and residents as
well, but since cruise visitors now make over 80 percent of Cayman’s total
tourists, they should be considered more.
Principal attention, in catering to the cruise visitors, must be to the
downtown area. It is not only the first and last impression these tourists
have of these Islands, it is also the area that most of the ones who come
ashore will traverse in the course of their time here.
With that as a given, there is clearly work to be done by the Port
Beautification Committee, in association with Government and other interested
entities, and we offer some thoughts for their attention:
Consideration should be given to revisiting the “walking esplanade”, idea
previously floated by the Minister of Tourism, for the Harbour Drive area and
other sections of downtown. Even though the comfort and safety of so many
cruise passengers on foot will probably be more achievable once the port
expansion is completed, there have been no developments on this idea of more
pedestrian-friendly walkways.
There is also a need to improve both the condition and range of toilet and
rest facilities in town as well as the signage identifying them. The existing
facilities may have sufficed for the cruise traffic of earlier years; with the
increase of the past three years they are clearly not meeting demand.
Another need is for discreetly placed, simple directional signage for such
basic locational information such as post office, bank, telephone, washrooms,
government buildings and other essential information. Such signage, if not
permanent, can be designed on mobile bases that can be removed or replaced as
necessary.
As much as we need to improve the services and conveniences for visitors,
care must also be taken to ensure that the degree of clutter that one often
associates with cruise ship destinations in some parts of the Caribbean does
not creep in here.
There are already some signs that this may be the case, and as much as we
want to encourage the entrepreneur, we will be doing him/her no service by
allowing standards to fall.
The Cayman Islands has benefitted for years on its reputation for
maintaining high standards in its facilities; we cannot afford the emerging
negative reports indicating that our levels have dropped.
Some attention should also be paid to the somewhat confusing situation at
the junction of Shedden Road with Harbour Drive, where visitors on the eastern
sidewalk often seem unaware of the operating traffic light. With many cruise
visitors ashore, there are daily flare-ups at that junction with motorists
honking at visitors to “watch the light” and the naturally irritated reactions
from the visitors from their close shave. Attempts to rectify this matter have
been tried before; the matter should be revisited.
There can be no disputing that the restricted area that government has to
work with downtown means improvements are not easy to achieve, but given that
our golden goose is more now of the cruise ship variety, we have to make the
effort.
We can create a very tasteful memory of the Cayman Islands if we care
enough to pay attention to how people remember us.
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