The Cayman Islands is preparing for a referendum on whether that British dependency should develop cruise berthing infrastructure to attract larger vessels.
Minister for Tourism and Ports, Kenneth Bryan says since the COVID-19 pandemic fewer of the smaller cruise ships have been docking. “As a government, we believe that building a pier would be in the long-term best interest of the Cayman Islands as it would sustain our cruise tourism industry in years to come. However, this is not a decision that the government intends to take alone. We want to hear from the people, what their perspective is and that is why we’re having a referendum on this issue as soon as possible and why it’s so vitally important,” he said.Â
No date has been fixed for the referendum, but Mr Bryan said the vote would be held at the same time with next year’s general elections. The plan, he said, is properly educate the public about the issues.
With cruise tourism’s gross output declined from $350 million before the COVID-19 pandemic to just over $260 million in 2023, and a further projected decline to $253 million for this year, he says the government needs a popular vote on whether to construct a pier for large cruise ships.
The Economic Impact of Cruise Tourism in the Cayman Islands, prepared by the Economics and Statistics Office, states that for the seven years between 2013 and 2019, Cayman’s cruise visitor arrivals grew by an average of 3.2% per year.
The report states that it is estimated that if Cayman had a port and attracted larger
vessels from existing cruise lines, it could have received between 17,621 and 419,026 additional visitors in 2024. The potential new visitors foregone is expected to continue in all subsequent years under a status quo scenario, with higher demand fuelling the addition of larger ships to the fleet of most cruise lines. Consequently, the growth in cruise is not expected to benefit the islands fully.
The study says in 2024, Carnival Cruise Line is expected to make 95 total visits to Cayman, while Royal Caribbean Cruise Line and MSC Cruises are expected to visit 45 times and 37 times, respectively. If the islands had attracted the larger cruise vessels for the year, total arrivals from those three lines would have increased by an estimated 179,621. This would generate an additional $37.6 million in gross spending and result in gross value-added rising to 158.8 million (or 2.7% of projected GDP). A total of 1,766 employment would have been supported.
According to the document, a scenario where Cayman had returned to its peak number of visits for 2024 but with the larger classes of ships from the three main cruise lines would generate a gross output of $490.6 million and gross value added of $267.7 million (or 4.6% of total GDP for the year). The increase would have supported 2,977 jobs and contributed $39.0 million in fiscal revenue.
