In a Nov. 13 Beacon commentary about last month’s UberSoca Cruise, I explained that when it comes to major events, feelings are not facts. Seeing crowds and hearing music do not automatically tell us what happened in the economy.
In the Nov. 27 edition, I shared something equally important: Data does not collect itself. In a place like the VI, the only way to understand impact is to ask the ones who experienced it: business operators.
Now that responses to the UberSoca business-impact survey are coming in, we’ve reached the next stage of the conversation: learning how to read what businesses are actually telling us.
This part matters, because survey data does not speak in one voice: It speaks in patterns.
So far, 110 business operators across the territory have completed the survey: food and beverage operators, retailers, vendors, taxi drivers, accommodation providers, service businesses and one-person operations.
If you line those responses up and read them one by one — not as percentages, but as lived experiences — a picture begins to form.
Some businesses describe an excellent day. Others say it was slow. Some say it felt like just another Tuesday.
In broad terms, the responses split into three groups: Roughly a quarter of businesses report doing better than a normal day, just over a third report doing worse, and the remaining group describe the day as largely unchanged.
At first glance, that may seem contradictory. It isn’t.
Once those experiences are laid side by side, the next question becomes unavoidable: Why did businesses experience the same day so differently?
Perspectives
One way to make sense of the responses is by geography — not in terms of importance, but in terms of how the event was designed to move people.
As the data comes in, business experiences naturally fall into three broad zones. Inside the event flow were businesses located directly along the tramp route and immediate event area in Road Town, including the pier park and the boardwalk. These businesses experienced the most intense foot traffic — concentrated into a short window — with outcomes ranging from very strong to unexpectedly weak depending on exact positioning.
Near the event flow were businesses just outside the core — places like McNamara, Lower Estate, Long Bush and Huntums Ghut. These businesses were close enough to feel the disruption of road closures and the half-day holiday taken by government and some companies, but not consistently close enough to benefit from foot traffic. Their results were mixed, often shaped by uncertainty rather than demand.
Outside the event flow were businesses further afield — including Pasea, Purcell Estate, Baughers Bay, Fish Bay, Kingstown, Meyers, Cane Garden Bay, Ballast Bay and Sage Mountain. Most describe a day that was either quieter than normal or largely unchanged, with little to no direct interaction with cruise passengers.
This geographic lens doesn’t explain everything, but it helps explain why experiences differed so sharply. With that context in mind, the clearest place to start is with the businesses that sat squarely inside the event flow.
In the ‘sweet spot’
Start with the businesses that were positioned inside the event flow — or, as one respondent called it, “the sweet spot.” They include vendors and a handful of food, beverage and retail outlets close to the tramp route.
This group represents roughly one-fifth to one-quarter of respondents, and their descriptions are among the most consistent in the entire dataset.
Their responses describe sales that were higher than normal — in some cases 50-75 percent or more. Several reported selling out of food or drinks and having to restock during the event. A few described the day as one of the strongest they had seen in some time.
One vendor wrote that they sold out multiple times and had to replenish stock mid-event. Another described the day as “very high foot traffic for about four hours.” Others echoed the same pattern: busy, energetic and clearly time-bound.
Foot traffic was intense but compressed into a short window. Many of these businesses describe peak activity lasting between two and four hours, and several noted that once the party ended, traffic dropped just as quickly as it had arrived.
Most customers were UberSoca passengers, along with residents drawn into the same space. In many cases, businesses reported that the majority of their sales during that window came directly from cruise passengers.
What’s notable is not just that these businesses did well, but how consistent their descriptions are — upbeat, practical and focused on a specific period of activity — even though they don’t all agree on what should happen next.
Some want the ship to arrive earlier. Some want more advance notice. Some want deeper involvement in planning. They disagree on improvements, but they agree on the experience: Being inside the route mattered.
If the experience of businesses inside the route shows what concentrated access can produce, the responses from beyond it show the other side of the same design.
Open but empty
A much larger group of responses came from businesses outside the route. In fact, this is the single largest category in the survey: Just over one-third of respondents report that the day was slower than normal.
Retailers in Road Town, cafés away from the tramp, gas stations, barbershops, offices and service businesses describe a quieter-than-normal day. Some say it was slower than usual; others say it felt like business simply disappeared after early afternoon.
The language changes slightly from business to business, but the core message stays the same. Customers left town early. Roads were closed. Schools and offices shut. Regular customers didn’t come.
One food-and-beverage respondent summed it up plainly: “Due to closure, not one came by.”
Within this group, there is disagreement about why this happened. Some point to road closures, others to the half-day, others to routing. But they agree on the outcome: They didn’t get the crowd, and they felt the disruption. Again, not confusion — consistency.
For some businesses, however, the disconnect was even more stark.
Some of the most striking responses come from businesses that were physically close to the event but economically disconnected from it.
Roughly one in five respondents describe being close enough to see or hear the event, yet receiving little to no business from cruise passengers.
Several Road Town operators describe standing in their shops, able to see the tramp, hear the music and watch people pass — yet recording zero sales from the cruise.
“We stayed open all day,” one said. “We saw the event, but no customers came.”
Others describe passengers being directed away from retail areas toward the party and then back to the ship, without ever passing through the stores.
These respondents don’t all agree on what should be done differently. Some want better routing. Some want visitors guided through retail spaces. One respondent expressed deeper discomfort with the type of event based on their religious beliefs.
But they agree on the lived experience: Proximity alone did not translate into business.
Not every business experienced the day as a loss — but that doesn’t mean they experienced it as a gain.
Then there are the responses that might be easiest to overlook: businesses that report the day as “same as normal.” About one-quarter of respondents fall into this category.
Hotels, guesthouses, some Cane Garden Bay establishments and various service providers fall into this group. Their responses are calm, almost clinical.
“It was a normal Tuesday.”
“We had our usual clientele.”
“The cruise didn’t make much difference for us.”
These businesses don’t express frustration, but they don’t report benefit either. Some suggest earlier arrival might have changed things. Others believe the event demographic simply wasn’t aligned with their offering, or as some respondents said, “They came dressed to party, not to shop.”
Their shared sentiment is subtle but important: The event largely bypassed them. Neutral outcomes are still outcomes, and they help define the limits of impact. Taken together, these neutral responses help clarify not just who benefited or didn’t, but what businesses needed in order to plan.
Recurring theme
Across almost every type of response — positive, negative or neutral — one theme appears again and again: how the event was planned and communicated. More than half of respondents raise concerns related to timing, notice, routing or uncertainty — regardless of whether their business did well or poorly.
Businesses talk about finding out details “a few days before” or learning about closures only after plans had already been made.
They describe unclear information about which roads would be closed, and when — leaving customers and staff unable to reach them.
Several say they didn’t know the route in advance, and they watched passengers be directed “straight to the party” and then back to the ship without passing through nearby shops.
Others describe not knowing how long guests would stay, noting that the ship arrived in the afternoon and that “there wasn’t much time” for visitors to move beyond the event.
What’s striking is that this concern cuts across outcomes. Businesses that did well raise it. Businesses that struggled raise it. Even businesses that describe the day as “normal” raise it.
In different words, the message is the same: Businesses needed earlier notice.
This is one of the clearest points of agreement in the data so far — not about whether UberSoca was a good or bad idea for the VI, but about how late information and uncertainty shaped business planning, staffing and sales on the day itself.
When the same issues come up across very different experiences, they stop being complaints and start pointing to a real pattern.
At this stage, the survey is not delivering a verdict, and it shouldn’t: Its role is to describe what happened before deciding what it means. Good data analysis starts with patterns, not conclusions. And that is what the survey is beginning to show.
What businesses experienced that day was not random. They were shaped by where a business was located, when the ship arrived, how long visitors stayed, and how the event moved people through town. Those factors mattered more than how anyone felt about the event itself.
What is also becoming clear is that many businesses shared the same experience even when they disagreed on the reasons or on what could have been done differently.
In other words, people can disagree about the details and still agree on what happened.
Past ‘good’ or ‘bad’
It’s also worth saying what the data doesn’t show. There isn’t a clear divide between businesses that thought UberSoca was a good idea and those that thought it was a bad one.
About one in five respondents clearly expressed mixed views, saying they supported the concept of UberSoca while raising concerns about how it was executed, or reporting losses while still describing the cruise as positive exposure for the territory. That’s why the responses don’t add up to a simple yes-or-no answer.
Perhaps most importantly, what the survey captures are overlapping real-world experiences — not a simple argument about whether UberSoca was “good” or “bad.”
This is what real-world data looks like when it starts to come into focus.
As more responses arrive, these patterns will sharpen. The survey will close once enough businesses have weighed in. But even now, the data is already doing its job: moving the conversation away from gossip and assumption, and toward learning and understanding.
This is exactly the kind of data conversation we need to have across the VI. And that, in itself, is progress.
Mr. Skeete is the Virgin Islands national consultant for the United Nations Development Programme.