Moontown

A Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association report, not only found significant growth in passenger and crew arrivals and spending, but also a high degree of satisfaction by cruise passengers, friendliness of residents and courtesy of employees.

According to the study, total estimated passenger and crew visits increased by nearly 250 percent from 113,300 visits during the 2005/2006 cruise year to 388,400 during the 2008/2009 cruise year.

Cruise ships docked in St Kitts

Total direct expenditures in St Kitts increased even more dramatically growing by 550 percent from US$6.7 million in the 2005/2006 cruise year to US$44 million in the 2008/2009 cruise year.

It said cruise tourism expenditures increased among all groups, passengers, and crew and cruise lines.

The growth in passenger and crew expenditures in St Kitts was not only driven by the 250 percent increase in onshore visits, but also by the 73 percent increase in average passenger expenditures and a seven fold increase in the reported average crew expenditures.

“These are certainly significant increases and were among the largest estimated among those the 29 destinations that participated in both studies. The growth in per passenger expenditures varied across categories,” said the report.

For example, during the 2005/2006 cruise year, passengers who purchased jewelry spent an average of US$144. This average purchase value increased to US$319 during the 2008/2009 cruise year. In addition the percentage of passengers purchasing jewelry also increased from 17 percent to 25 percent.

In the case of visiting crew, the sharp increase in per crew spending is primarily due to an impressive increase in the percentage of crew reporting purchases in each category.

Tour taxi loads up visitors in St Kitts

“In the 2006 study 34 percent of crew reported making an average purchase of US$23.20 for food and beverages. This increased to 42 percent reporting an average expenditure of US$36.40 at restaurants and bars in the current study,” said the report

Similar increases in the percentage of crew making purchases were reported in most categories.

As a result of the 250 percent increase in direct cruise tourism expenditures from the 2005/2006 cruise year for St Kitts, the economic impacts increased as well.

The total employment impact increased by 268 percent over the three-year period, while the wage impact increased by 295 percent. The higher growth in wages is due to increased labor productivity and average wages over the intervening period.

Of the 1,442 cruise parties that completed the surveys 87 percent stated that this had been their first visit to St Kitts.

Ninety-six percent (96%) of the cruise parties that completed the surveys disembarked their cruise ship to visit St Kitts.

Of the cruise parties that went ashore, 81 percent made at least one purchase while ashore. The typical cruise party consisted of 2.1 passengers and spent an average of 4.4 hours ashore.

The responding cruise parties reported spending an average of US$162 while ashore (excludes shore excursions).

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of the passengers that went ashore purchased a shore excursion. Seventy-three percent (73%) of passengers who purchased a tour did so through their cruise line, nearly 24% purchased their tour onshore and 3 percent purchased their tour through their travel agent. The typical cruise party that purchased a shore excursion spent $131 for their tour.

Amina Market

The passenger survey also asked the passengers to rate their satisfaction with their destination visit along a number of parameters. A 10-point scale was used with 10 being the highest score, i.e., extremely satisfied, and 1 being the lowest score, i.e., not at all satisfied.

Cruise passengers were very satisfied with their overall visit to St Kitts with a mean score of 7.8. However, the visit did not score as high in terms of meeting expectations. The mean score for “Visit Met Expectations” was lower at 7.4.

Passengers felt very informed about tours and onshore activities in St Kitts with a mean score of 7.7.

“Guided Tours” (or Shore Excursions) received the third highest score of all visit attributes with a mean score of 8.1. Thus, cruise passengers were very satisfied with their shore excursions.

Passenger interactions with residents and store employees were very positive with “friendliness of residents” receiving a mean score of 8.3 and “courtesy of employees” having a mean score of 8.2.

Categories with slightly lower scores but still above 7.0 (Very Satisfied) were: initial shoreside welcome, historic sites and local transportation.

Only “variety of things to see and do” received a mean score lower than 7.0. The mean score for this category was 6.9 (Somewhat Satisfied)

Passengers were also very satisfied with their shopping experience which received a mean score of 7.6. It was already noted that passengers were very satisfied with shop employees but they were also very satisfied the variety of shops (7.3) and overall prices (7.1).

Cruise passengers stated that they were somewhat likely to return to St Kitts for a land-based vacation.

Residents of the United States and the Canada accounted for 91 percent of the responding passengers. The average age of the respondents was 54 years with 28 percent of the respondents being 65 years of age or older. St Kitts passengers had an average household income of $104,400 with 42 percent having over $100,000 in household income.

“Jamaica has had an unblemished record of repaying its debts. I want to affirm, today, that we have no intention of allowing that valuable reputation to be compromised,” Golding told Sunday’s annual conference of his governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in Kingston.

Golding also assured holders of government bonds that contractual obligations to them remain “inviolable”. However, the Prime Minister lamented that the country’s interest rates do not need to be as high as they are.

“We cannot by a stroke of a pen, or by legislation, mandate interest rates to go down. But they can come down and they must come down,” Golding said.

He explained that the effort would require the support of stakeholders in the market, and that discussions were already taking place, “for there is a clear mutual benefit in seeing the Government’s fiscal and monetary programme placed on a path that is sustainable, credible and conducive to investment and growth.”

“No one can benefit in the long term, if the economy continues to fail. The multilateral institutions have pledged their support. The details are being fine-tuned and that is very much a part of the current discussions taking place with the IMF,” he said.

Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding. JIS Photo

“We will very shortly be outlining in Parliament the terms of the IMF agreement, the details of the economic programme to be pursued and targets to be met, the policy measure to be implemented and the debt management strategy to be executed,” Golding told his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) annual conference on November 22.

“We will also be outlining changes in our revenue programme, to ensure that we begin the process of closing the gap between expenditure and revenue,” he said.

He explained that some Jamaicans will experience relief in these measures, including an increase in the income tax threshold to $440,000 from the current $320,736 as of January 1, 2010, which will affect the pay slips of some 132,000 workers. However, he said that the main thrust of revenue programme will be to “spread the burden of tax” more broadly and to shift the burden from Pay as You Earn (PAYE) contributors to “pay as you consume” General Consumption Tax (GCT) contributions.

He said that the concept is already being rolled out, but the Government will have to make clear what it can do without a cost to the public, and what it cannot do without a cost.

“We will have to be very clear in terms of the things that Government must provide without charge and the things that Government provides but must recover the cost,” he said. (C’bean Net News)

Delays in negotiating a critical deal with the International Monetary Fund are eroding investor confidence in the country, which remains highly dependent on disbursements from multilateral institutions, Fitch said.

“While the government’s willingness to service its massive debt burden has traditionally been high, its capacity to do so is being seriously jeopardized by the magnitude of the macroeconomic and fiscal shocks the country faces,” Fitch analyst Shelly Shetty said in a statement.

“Limited policy options to meet the fiscal challenges raise the possibility of some form of debt restructuring,” she added.

Fitch cut Jamaica’s long-term foreign- and local-currency debt ratings to CCC from B. It also left them on negative outlook, meaning that further downgrades are possible in the short term.

In the beginning of this month, Standard & Poor’s cut Jamaica’s ratings to CCC from CCC-plus, followed by Moody’s, which downgraded them to Caa1 from B2 last week.

Dr Ashni Singh

The agreement was inked on between head of the EU delegation here Ambassador Geert Heikens and Finance Minister Ashni Singh

This funding marks the commencement of the 23-month initiative which is expected to facilitate the reconstruction of 1.5kilometres of sea defences as well as rehabilitation and maintenance of 18 kilometers of the same.

Singh called for this to be seen not just as another physical infrastructure project, but one that contributes to the productive sector of the country’s economy.

“We need to see it for what is it, an extremely important physical infrastructural project, but also one that contributes to the real sector, the productive sector of the community,” he said.

The Finance Minister pointed out that this year’s budget has allocated GY$2.2 billion to sea and river defence works.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Heikens underscored the importance of the project to Guyana which lies below sea level and can be one of the most vulnerable victims of rising sea levels due to the climate change phenomenon

“It is everything. It is lives and livelihoods. It is people and homes, everything can be at stake,” he said.

In a late change to the CHOGM agenda, Commonwealth and a number of other world leaders will convene in a special session on climate change on 27 November in an effort to agree a stand-alone statement on the issue on 28 November. This special session has garnered significant international attention, and is now seen by some as an important precursor to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December.

In the face of significant pre-CHOGM political and diplomatic pressure from a handful of Commonwealth-member major emitters, Prime Minister Tillman Thomas of Grenada, in his role as Chair of the 43-member Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), confirmed that the island states’ 1.5ï‚°C limit – now supported by more than 80 countries worldwide – is not up for negotiation.

The world’s best climate scientists and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees have already warned that the 2ï‚°C limit supported by the big emitters would render a number of island states completely uninhabitable. Serious adverse impacts are already being felt by island states at the current 0.8ï‚°C of warming, including coastal erosion, flooding, coral bleaching and more frequent and intense extreme weather events.

“I will not go to CHOGM to make compromises that we already know will jeopardize the livelihood, viability and survival of a number of our islands,” he said. “No state or group of states has the right to condemn another to the unprecedented tragedy of climate-driven statelessness.”

Prime Minister Thomas also hit out ongoing efforts by a number of world leaders – including Prime Minister Rasmussen and President Obama – to water down the expectation that countries will conclude a new treaty at the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Summit, beginning on 7 December.

“We do not understand the meaning of ‘politically binding’, said Prime Minister Thomas, responding to the weak potential deal outlined recently by the Danish Prime Minister. “Either we have a legally binding treaty, or we do not. The draft treaty texts have been on the table for more than six months, including one from the United States. There are no practical obstacles whatsoever. All that’s lacking is the political will.”

Prime Minister Thomas welcomed recent news that at least 65 Heads of State would attend the Copenhagen Summit in December. “We have the science, we have the draft texts, and we will have the world’s ultimate decision makers in the room. In short, we have all the ingredients for success in Copenhagen”, said Thomas. (C’bean Net News)

Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma said the 53-member body composed mainly of former British colonies was holding its biennial summit, known as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), at a key moment.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma. AFP PHOTO

“This CHOGM will be a meeting of its time, to consider the issues of its time,” Sharma said as he addressed hundreds of Commonwealth civic leaders, gathered in Trinidad ahead of the summit talks.

Since the last such forum in Kampala, Uganda in 2007, “the global situation has drastically changed,” said Sharma, an Indian career diplomat.

“We have all had a bad few years of crisis upon crisis. The fuel and food crises of last year have been compounded by a financial crisis in 2009, in which no less than half of our members are suffering negative growth.”

Since its founding 60 years ago, the Commonwealth has stretched around the globe, and now represents two billion people and accounts for a fifth of world trade.

“Everyone is hurting — there is a strong case for saying that CHOGM 2009 constitutes a crisis summit,” Sharma told the opening of the Commonwealth People’s Forum.

He also said he believed summit leaders would put forward a strong political statement ahead of the UN climate change conference to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark from December 7.

In a rare move, UN chief Ban Ki-moon as well as Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen will travel to Trinidad for talks with Commonwealth leaders on Friday, also set to be attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Rasmussen will visit Trinidad to encourage Commonwealth heads of state and government to attend the December 7-18 climate talks in Copenhagen, a Danish spokesman told AFP.

The summit talks will be officially opened by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II on Friday and end on Sunday.