Focus on the Referendum

By Staff Writer

A press conference held Wednesday explained the reasons for holding the cruise port development question at the same time as the General Election next year. At the same time Government will ask the voting public for their thoughts on developing a National Lottery and the decriminalisation of small quantities of marijuana.

Tourism and Ports Minister Kenneth Bryan said that a main driver was holding the referendum at the same time as the election to significantly reduce costs, allowing the Elections Office to maximise resources and negate the need to shut down schools and businesses for the event. Mr Bryan said timing both simultaneously could only cost around $200,000 more than a normal election, whereas prior to linking the referendum to the General Election, the referendum was pricing out at $1,200,000 alone.

The timing also allowed for a more comprehensive education campaign and provided for more time for consultation to ensure voters have fully understood what they were voting for. Eligible voters had until 1st January 2025 to register to vote.

There will therefore be three questions posed, the first one being whether the country should develop cruise berthing infrastructure. The panel detailed the ongoing decline of the cruise tourism industry, and the severe negative impacts on jobs for Caymanians within the cruise sector through the loss of millions of dollars that the cruise sector contributed.

It was outlined that the cruise sector was supporting 2,587 jobs or 5.8% of total annual employment, roughly just less than half of those jobs being undertaken by Caymanians.

Pre the pandemic the cruise sector generated spend $350.1 million to the economy, falling to $261 million in 2023 and a projected $253.4 million in 2024, the Minister said.

“The cruise sector historically has been a lifeline but was now showing a pattern of steady decline,” he said, adding Cayman’s economy would be impacted by an annual decline of 5.2% going forward and, without intervention, down to nothing.

Ralston Henry, Senior Economist at the Economic & Statistics Office, said Cayman was a small, open service-based economy and any sustained loss had to be considered within the context of Cayman’s limited economic diversification.

With regard to cruise tourism, there was no recovery significant enough to match the pre pandemic era, he advised. Looking at the patterns, major cruise lines like Carnival and Royal Caribbean were coming more infrequently to Cayman.  Out of the Royal Caribbean’s last 12 vessels launched the line introduced, only two came to Cayman, and they were the two smallest ones, none of the largest vessels arrived. As far as Carnival was concerned, only two out of 12 new ships have consistently visited Cayman.

“Larger vessels are largely bypassing Cayman,” he said.

Expenditure was another aspect to consider, with $166.8 million received from the industry in 2019 going down to $128.9 million in 2024, although the panel could not speak to how these figures were distributed among local residents.

Without additional actions projections for arrivals would decline 2% annually, the panel advised. If Cayman had been able to attract larger cruise lines in 2024 it would have been able to increase cruise visitor arrivals by around 419,000 visitors in 2024, had Cayman had a port able to attract people.

“Without a cruise peer, the Cayman Islands is side stepping away from the cruise industry,” Minister Bryan said, adding that Government felt building a peer was in the long-term interests of the people. But it was not a decision Government wanted to make alone, they wanted to hear from the public.

The Minister would be attending the St Maarten Florida Caribbean Cruise Association Conference to hear for himself the expectations impediments and successes for the industry. He had invited along both the CPR anti-cruise peer group and the ACT pro-peer group to attend the conference with him, but while ACT said they could attend, CPR said their members had not received enough notice to be able to go.

The other two questions voters will be asked will be their opinion on whether the Cayman Islands should intro a national lottery and whether possession of small amounts of marijuana should be criminalised. In these respects, Government was keeping its word and delivering the resolution passed in 2022 to allow the people to have their say, the Minister stated.