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Joined: Oct 1999
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Marty Offline OP
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Cancellation of Cruise Calls Left, Right And Center! 10K Will Not Come This Week!

And while the Butane shutdown may well not proceed, the tourism industry is going through its own kind of mini-shutdown, courtesy Carnival cruise line.

Carnival has cancelled calls to Belize by three ships that were scheduled to arrive in the coming week. Those ships are the Glory, the Legend, and the Valor, with a combined passenger count of 9,600.

That's almost ten thousand cruise passengers who won't be coming, in just a week! And add to that the cancellation of the Braemar, which is a smaller ship with 950 passengers and you've got more than ten thousand cancelled!

Only the Carnival Dream with 3646 passengers will arrive as scheduled tomorrow.

We were unable to reach the Tourism Board for comment, but it is widely known that Carnival is making the cancellations because it cannot work out suitable tendering arrangements. We can't even say where that is because the situation continues to be fluid and indeterminate�.

Channel 7


Joined: Dec 2009
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This kind of corporate arrogance disgusts me!

My heart goes out to all the wonderful people this will be affecting labor-wise and vendor sales-wise.

I spent 22 yrs in the military traveling all over, plus my own personal travels; lots of nice places, but fell in love with only Belize. So I feel as I should be as angry as the Belizian folks are about this. I could rant on about it, but won't.

Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 6,267
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When you get in bed with a giant, it can roll over and squish you.

Many protested that cruise ships would be bad for Belize, but this wrinkle was not considered at the time.

I think that the tenders we have in Belize City are really nice!


Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 600
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ron Offline
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I seem to remember that there is more than one cruise line. One way to combat this is contain other cruise lines and make it know that Belize has terminated any relationship it has with Carnival lines. Make sure that other people and countries know how heavy handed they are. Just a thought. I also think the tenders look good and I can't recall there ever being any problems with the ones currently in use.

Joined: Oct 2001
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Interesting thought Ron, but I wonder if trading one cruise line for another is merely to "trade monkey for black dog."


Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 2,461
K
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All this is going on because the ultimate plan is to have one tender operator who will service all the cruise ships, who are all in on this plan to squeeze out the smaller tender operators-RC, Carnival and NCL. If Belize wants to do biz with them (and that goes for tender operators, tour operators, food service providers, gift shops) they will have to capitulate their the ships demands. Or they go elsewwhere. We are wasting our time pandering to the ships while we should be doing all we can to stimulate overnight tourism. I said that before we allowed the cruise ships and am borded hearing myself say it again and again.


Belize based travel specialist
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Joined: Oct 2006
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Probably is but we now know the half life of what the relationship will be. They also sell cruises based on stopping in Belize. My former bookkeeper is booked for this summer and took that cruise because it stopped in Belize. A couple of stories in travel mags could cast a negative image on the cruise lines.

Joined: Jan 2010
Posts: 610
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Katie, you are 100% right. Why should we make cruise ships a priority when they do not want to respect our sovereign rights to regulate their activities. If we want to do business with them we first need legislation regulating the way they do business here. Through no fault of their own many Belizeans are loosing income and many have large investments now in jeopardy. Cruise ships should be operating with a contract with the GOB to protect our national interests. We should not be dependent on such a source of revenue. We need to develop our overnight market and develop our sports fishing industry and look only at sustainable developments. Cruise ships don't fall into that category.

Neither does petroleum for that matter. We have a finite amount which will soon start to deplete. Why are we basing our economy on this? The predicted 2% growth rate spells disaster for us. We have too many young people that will need jobs now and in the immediate future to accept that.

We must stop wasting time on dreaming of oil riches and cruise ship bonanzas and get down to the business of developing our country and creating jobs. PRIVATE SECTOR JOBS! We are being strangled by the size and lack of meaningful production of our government. Combined with the perceived influence of special interests it does not present a pretty picture.

The conduct of the last PUP gov combined with the performance or lack of by this government has put us in a downward spiral that will need different thinking to reverse. As unemployment rises with the natural increase in the work force, crime will also surely rise. Time to wake up and do something while we still can. That does not mean hiring more government employees.

Many government jobs and regs serve to retard commerce and make it harder to start new businesses which is the life blood of a growing economy as opposed to helping stimulate economic activity. We need a conceptual change to reverse this course. Simply waiting for the world economy to improve is not nearly good enough.

The dreaded new Labour Law will worsen the situation with the public workers making it very difficult and expensive to extract ourselves from our current mess which largely stems from a too large and inefficient government. This may be the reason we were trying to find for the new law, which is beyond understanding, to benefit public "workers" and help them maintain their strangle hold on the economy. Of course it is not the individuals just the government padding its own nest.

Last edited by Mike Campbell; 01/25/11 02:12 PM.
Joined: Jan 2003
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You can't negotiate with someone who holds all the cards. That's the way the cruise lines have always operated and always will. If you don't like it they will just take their toys and play elsewhere with the next poor shmuck who buys into their dog and pony show.

Joined: Nov 2004
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Was in BC yesterday and there was one cruise ship in port. Sad. Too bad the video from the lady in Roatan wasn't given to the government years ago before they started. We can only hope that the Carnival cruise passengers will get irate when finding out that their itinerary has been changed and they will not be able to come to Belize after all, even though they paid for it.


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