Editorial
Cayman is forEveryone
It is sometimes the case that we are soclose to an event and we become so completely engrossed in thedetails that the macro reality is lost on us. A case in pointis the fact of the continually rising number of cruise ship visitors approximately 3 million predicted by the end of this year,and 4 million projected for 2003.
Now it cannot be a secret that from thetime of former ExCo member for Tourism Mr. Warren Conolly's daysin our tourism industry, the mantra has always been that Caymanis not for everybody; to be more specific, Cayman has always targeted,and openly so, the affluent visitor. Furthermore, although thestrategy has always had its critics --exclusion; snobbery; expensive;and so on it was demonstrably successful for these Islandsas the tourism numbers kept building and building until recentyears when competition increased and the cry of "expensive"became more intense.
Against that background therefore, the widerpoint to be made here, and the macro reality being posited, isthat somewhere along the recent line, deliberately or otherwise,it appears we are no longer living by that "affluent visitor"mantra.
Now given the continued drop in stay overvisitors two years in a row, now, and little surcease insight it may well be that the only alternative, for an economyso dependent on the tourism dollar, is to turn to getting as manycruise ship visitors here on the basis that, albeit we hear aboutthe shallow pockets of the cruise vacationer, that many peoplewould have to produce more revenue for at least some businessesin the tourism sector.
But the point here is that no official discussionor even reference to this shift has been made, and it is a fundamental,even critical, shift. The direction we now seem to have turnedto, or are turning to, is essentially mass-market tourism; somethingwe have strongly eschewed in the past.
Entire business concepts, not to say infrastructureand even services, have been developed in this country to coalescewith the affluent visitor standard that is the opposite of masstourism. As we move to more and more bodies coming ashore on thislimited landscape, the prospects of attracting the affluent visitorwill surely decline further.
The vacationer with the wherewithal to affordthe high-priced hotel or the $50 dinner is precisely the one whowill be first to say "no thanks" to congestion, traffictie-ups, more boats at Stingray City, overcrowded beaches, etc.If we no longer have that visitor first and foremost in our tourismminds, then somebody in authority should be saying so.
To be fair about this, there must be manyin the business community who have already discerned this forthemselves, and there are indeed some who are indicating so, butsurely it is time for Government to be pro-active, to use thecurrent popular buzzword, and to articulate the policy specificallyso that those who need to shift gears and that sounds likea majority in the business community · can shift gears.
We have been operating so long on the basisthat the Cayman Islands with its affluent clientele and high standardswere "different from the rest of the Caribbean". Nowthat we are running excitedly up the tourism gangplank, now thatwe are closing off streets to battle congestion, now that thecoconut vendors and hair-braiders are emerging downtown, it'stime somebody tells us if the tourism policy we lived by has beenaltered.
The business community in tourism, and allwho service it, need to be told, "The game is different,now gentlemen. Mr. Warren used to say 'Cayman is not for everybody.'In today's tourism the word 'not' no longer applies."