FRANK GONZALEZ The Cayman Islands are considering reducing the amount of cruise tourism that is allowed to visit the Grand Cayman island.
The island has already discussed a total ban on island cruises by 2021.
The British Overseas Territory also announced that it will not proceed to build a cruise port in the island group’s capital, Georgetown.
This work had been enthusiastically received by the local government.
Prime Minister Alden McLaughlin commented that money from cruise lines would be welcome as no public funds would be spent.
The cruise port plan was by a group of locals, leading to the need for a referendum and eventually the government canceled the construction of the cruise port, Cruise Hive reported.
The current situation demonstrated that the islands have managed to survive, thrive in some cases, without millions of cruise ship passengers passing through the islands each year.
Instead, the island will seek to put a limit on the number of visitors who can come to the islands by cruise. Cruise travel would not be completely banned, according to McLaughlin.
“We limit the numbers so that our current system can better accommodate them, and the experience for those who visit can be better,” said the prime minister.
Residents and business owners said they did not want to “go back with a large number of visitors” that Cayman had hosted in recent years.
In 2019, more than 1.83 million cruise passengers visited Grand Cayman.