Pros And Cons

During my first year as chairman of the Bequia Tourist Committee I started researching the impact the cruise ship industry had on the Island.  The Prime Minister had asked me to write a paper out-lining the problems caused by cruise ship visits to Bequia, and what could be done to alleviate them.  The research would not include the mainland or any of the other Grenadine Islands, just Bequia.

It was difficult to know where to start. I didn’t want to be entirely negative as some of the ships that called regularly were good for the Island.  A large part of the problem was Bequia’s lack of infrastructure, and the bigger the ship the bigger the problem. There was also a dreadful frenzy the moment a big ship dropped its anchor and something had to be done about it. A lot of children didn’t attend school on those days, and the water and land taxis went positively apeshit!  I realized that I knew very little about the cruise ship industry and decided to learn as much as I could before attempting to write a formal paper on the subject.

That year, as chairman of the tourism committee, I boarded each cruise ship that came to Bequia.  I went to the vessels on the first tender and spent time watching as passengers started to go ashore.  I was always offered breakfast and that was nice, but no-one showed any interest in me, the tourism representative for the Island, and that seemed odd.  One would assume that the activities director would want to pick my brain about what Bequia had to offer, or that the Captain would be interested in meeting me.  I was left to myself, which gave me a chance to listen and learn.

One morning I boarded a large ship carrying 800 or so passengers, not a large vessel by today’s standards but WAY too big for little Bequia.  As I made my way past the line of passengers waiting to board the tender I could hear a loudspeaker offering advice.  The ships’s cruise director was reminding those going ashore that Bequia was not a duty-free port and that they should save their shopping money for St. Thomas.  He stressed more than once that passengers did NOT need to take money ashore as there was nothing for them to buy on Bequia.

On another occasion I was on board when the loudspeaker warned passengers not to eat anything ashore, that the food on board was safer.   I took great umbrage to that, and went in search of the loudspeaker so that I could meet the crew member who was insinuating that the food on Bequia was not good enough for consumption by his passengers.  That particular ship had what was called a Host, another name for Activities Director, and I sat and talked to him for quite a while about the ship and the different ports they called at.  The talk drifted to restaurants (he didn’t know I owned one myself), and it became very clear that the host had an aversion to Caribbean food.  He told me that the food was too spicy in the Islands, and that the ship’s Doctor didn’t want to have to deal with food poisoning on top of seasickness.  I had always understood why cruise ship passengers hardly ever ate ashore; with meals inclusive on the ships why pay for lunch elsewhere?  I never realized that passengers were actively encouraged by crew members not to eat the local food until that day!

Word of mouth is a big deal on board a cruise ship.  Passengers listen to and believe pretty well everything a crew member tells them about the destination, even if that crew member has never set foot ashore.  Spending time on the ships was a real eye-opener, the personnel badly needed educating to ensure that what they passed on to passengers was accurate!  Passengers listened to each other as well, and that year I heard passengers who had already been ashore tell others not to bother, that there was nothing to see on Bequia.  I heard that over and over and found it terribly sad.

There was so much for me to learn, and the more I learned the more I realized that a paper out-lining the pros and cons of the cruise ship industry on Bequia was going to be a daunting task indeed.  By boarding the cruise ships I had only scratched the surface, but it helped me understand where some of the obvious problems lay.