by Brian Major
Last updated: 10:27 AM ET, Thu February 25, 2021
Cayman Islands officials are poised to reduce the number of cruise vessels visiting the destination while also slashing the millions of shipboard visitors the nation hosts annually, the country's premier said this week.
Traditionally among the most-visited Caribbean cruise ports, the Cayman Islands will not abandon cruise tourism but will "cap the numbers so that our current system can accommodate them in a better way and the experience for those who do visit can be better," said Alden McLaughlin, the Cayman Islands premier, in a Cayman Compass report.
The tourism shutdown driven by the March coronavirus outbreak prepared the island to "survive" without cruise ship visits for nearly one year, McLaughlin said at a briefing Tuesday announcing the debut of a new Cayman Islands hospital wing. As a result, the government will consider "diversifying the industry, such as embracing medical tourism," he said.
The Cayman Islands hosted 1.83 million cruise ship visitors in 2019, the last full year of cruise activity. The total ranked third among Caribbean nations tracked by the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO).
McLaughlin said the government has received a "clear signal" that Cayman residents and the business community prefer not "to go back to the large number of [cruise ship] visitors" the destination has hosted in recent years.
The government banned cruise ship calls in March following the COVID-19 outbreak and postponed a referendum that would have decided the fate of a government-backed, $150 million cruise berthing facility proposed for George Town.
McLaughlin said the cruise port proposal, which the government has explored over the past several years, is "effectively dead." The outcome makes it unlikely the Cayman Islands will host cruise mega-ships and the millions of shipboard visitors they accommodate in future years.
"If we are not going to go ahead with the construction of a cruise berthing facility, we simply cannot accommodate the number of visitors that we previously had in a way that the cruise companies are willing to accept," said McLaughlin.
The Cayman Islands is the only major Caribbean cruise destination without modern piers and a berthing facility sufficient to accommodate contemporary vessels. Throughout the last decade, large ships visiting the country have anchored offshore and ferried passengers into George Town. Cruise officials say that without modern piers, Cayman cruise calls will increasingly decrease as operators increasingly deploy ever-larger vessels.
McLaughlin said the past year indicated the destination can overcome the loss of mass cruise tourism. He predicted the Cayman Islands "can survive without the large numbers," he said, adding "we need more balance [to] not overwhelm the systems that we have by sheer volume of people."
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