Ocho Rios
Resorts
Resort hotels in Ochio Rios. In which country
are we? [It is not as obvious as it seems!]
Luxury ocean liners
stop here for a couple of hours as they travel around the Caribbean Sea.
Why would some tourists stay in these resorts whereas others visit
the
islands
by
cruise
ships?
What economic, let alone cultural, impact does this form of
international tourism have on the local and national economies and
cultures?
To find which country you are in, match the flag with the country name in an atlas!
Many tourists believe that cruise ships are "safer" than staying in restricted resort hotels, such as this one on the north coast of Jamaica. Food, water, beds, language -- all conform to middle class US standards. It's leaving home without really doing so!
55 percent of tourist foreign exchange (dollars, marks, yens) is lost from developing countries due to "leakage" back to industrialized countries -- in the form of goods (Coke, e.g.) and services (interest payments on USA loans, e.g). In the Caribbean countries, such as Jamaica, the leakage rises to 70 percent. In other words, only 30 percent of all the money tourists spend stays in the vacationing country. For cruises, leakage is almost 100 percent!
The number of people taking cruises has increased rapidly.
Passengers have increased by 8.5 percent a year since 1990. In 1995, 6.8 million passengers took a cruise: 4.4 million in the US-Canadian market, 1.5 million in the Asian market, and 0.9 million in the European market. The industry spends more than $100 million in advertising a year. Yet "cruising" only accounts for 2 percent of all money spent on holiday travel. As the number of affluent older people increases in all countries, spending on leisure will also increase. In the USA market, most cruise liners are not registered in the USA, so they can avoid minimum wage laws. Pay on Carnival Cruise Line ships starts as low as $1.55 an hour for those with non-tipping positions and as low as $1.50 a day for "busboys" who earn tips (about $1,000 in a month). Most employees are college students from the Third World attract by what Cynthia Colanda, president of the International Council of Cruise Lines, calls "excellent job opportunities" [Source: Z Magazine, September 1997, p. 5]. Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines was given a special tax break by the U.S. government to pay zero taxes from 1989 to 1992 on a profit of $158 million.
Tourism of all forms is big business for debt-ridden Third World countries. Kamala Kempadoo's book, Sun, Sex, and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean, forces North Americans to examine this aspect of tourism in the Caribbean islands.
Also read an article on how Caribbean tourism compares with other tourist regions.
