On June 7, The BVI Beacon turned 40. To celebrate, it is re-publishing some of the biggest stories from its archives over the past four decades. The article below originally ran May 3, 1990

 

Renovating port facilities for expanded cruise liner traffic would cost more than $10 million, requiring that ship traffic and passenger visits be increased 200 to 300 percent, according to a government-commissioned study.

Projected revenues from tourists would “not be enough to justify $10-13 million investment unless the investment led to a doubling or tripling of cruise traffic and passenger visits,” concluded the Feasibility Study submitted by Tahal Consulting Engineers Ltd., based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The BVI tourist industry must keep abreast of changing trends in the local trade “in order to assure controlled development,” the Report notes under the heading “Development Strategy.”

To deal with anticipated changes, the Report recommends developing facilities to “cater to the needs of the projected influx of cruise liner passengers.”

In the future, passengers from vessels as large as 30,000 Gross Register Tons (GRT) will replace yachting and diving enthusiasts who formerly constituted the bulk of the BVI’s visitors, according to the report submitted to Bennet Smith, the current project manager for the ports renovation project.

Elihu Rhymer, chairman of the tourist board, disputes some of Tahal’s conclusions.

“Biased information was given,” he charged in an interview on Tuesday.

Since port dues and passenger landing fees are assessed according to vessel size, tourists from large cruise vessels pay approximately one-quarter of the fees paid by passengers on mini-cruisers.

Though the Report states “in fact, one of the principal objectives of this project is to improve facilities for cruise vessels,” it admits that large cruise liners and their passengers “contribute little to the local economy.”

Economic benefits

“It is recognized that the sleep-over tourist contributes more to the economy than the cruise ship visitors by terms of employment generated, use of services, and dollar per head spent,” according to the BVI Statistics Department.

The average landing fee paid by a tourist from a large cruise vessel is approximately $5.30 compared to the $21.25 paid for dues, cruise and passenger taxes by smaller vessels.

In order to offset the smaller fees paid by passengers from large cruise ships, the Report recommends a vast increase in passenger and a cargo traffic to break even on the original $10-13 million investment

Human traffic

A more than 500 percent projected increase in passenger traffic over an 18-year period beginning 1987, would increase BVI cruise liner visitors from 60,000 to 306,000 in 2005. These figures do not include yachtsmen and vacationers who stay at local hotels and marinas.

Though these figures represent a twofold increase in the number of cruise vessels in less than two decades, they constitute a fivefold increase in human traffic due to the anticipated increase in large cruise vessels.

In 1987, two large cruise vessels, defined as weighing between 17,000-30,000 GRT, berthed in the BVI.

The projected berthing of 139 “large cruise vessels” in 2005 will represent a nearly 7000 percent increase in vessels over 17,000 tons.

For cruise liner passengers alone, on a per-day basis this would represent a difference between 164 visitors a day in 1987 compared to a projected 838 day visitors in the year 2005.