Only 3% of Cayman's Stay-Over Visitors Come to Dive

[KathyV]

The Bonaire tourism report at the link below is from 2010 (I couldn't find anything more recent) but page 36 says that 56% of visitors are divers. That makes sense, even though they have cruise ship visitors, most people go to Bonaire to dive. Just as has been mentioned, most people that go to Cayman Brac and Little Cayman are going there to dive, but not Grand Cayman so much.

But I am sure that Caymans gets far more visitors each than Bonaire and apparently only 1/8 of them are divers and only 3% primarily went there to dive. It's probably good for the Caymanian reefs that there isn't as much dive traffic or divers beating up the coral. There's probably too many of us already!

It's all okay, I was just surprised by the low numbers of Caymanian dive visitors. And it occurred to me that the new competition for US tourist dollars from Cuba, and concerns about Zika throughout the Caribbean, may convince the Cayman business owners and the tourism board to take steps to increase tourism that might not be so good for the natural environment and the reefs. I hope not.

I have been thinking about this lately because of 2 recent encounters. A friend of mine (not a diver) had a chance to stay in Vieques, Puerto Rico for free at a condo owned by a relative. She is an older woman and not of child-bearing age but she said they decided to rent a cabin in upper Michigan instead of going to PR because of concerns about Zika and other tropical diseases. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the mosquitos in Michigan carry encephalitis and that the deer ticks in the north woods carry Lyme disease.

Shortly after that I went out for dinner with a group of friends and 4 of them were young women of child-bearing age. Two are in long-term relationships and the other two are free agents. But they were all bemoaning the fact that they "can't find any place to go on vacation!" Between terrorism attacks and the threat of Zika no place seems safe any more.

I think that after the Summer Olympics Zika will become endemic in many parts of the world as so many people will be traveling home from Brazil. The tourism industry may be hit hard and I hope that the environment won't suffer as a result - anywhere in the world.

I guess this is just me worrying about things before they become a problem! Just ignore me!

http://www.tourismbonaire.com/includes/Annual-Statistics-Report-2010.pdf

 

[billinwilliamston]

"Of potential significance to advocates for new cruise facilities, the survey results show that almost 10 percent of stay-over visitors previously came to the Cayman Islands on a cruise ship"

I would say that the flip-side is more accurate.

Of potential significance to opponents of new cruise facilities, the survey results show that less than 10% of stay-over visitors previously came to the Cayman Islands on a cruise ship, or the survey results show that over 90% of stay-over visitors have never been to the Cayman Islands on a cruise ship.

 

[AggieDiver]

Nothing lies like a good set of statistics. I would be very curious to see the "per day spent" values for divers vs non-divers. I suspect that divers spend a good bit more per day than the non-divers, and as such have an economic footprint much larger than the 12% statistic would indicate.

 

[AggieDiver]

The impact may be even more disproportionate when you consider how much of the diver's economic impact stays in the economy and how much almost immediately goes off-island. If the diver is spending a large portion of their daily money paying locally owned dive operators and tipping DMs, while the beach goer is buying drinks bottled off-island and shipped in or jewelry sold at stores owned by multinational corporations, then only a small portion of the beach goer's spending is actually going to show up in the local economy. While a large portion of what the diver spends will stay local and be spread out to other businesses.

 

[perry64]

"Of potential significance to advocates for new cruise facilities, the survey results show that almost 10 percent of stay-over visitors previously came to the Cayman Islands on a cruise ship"

I would say that the flip-side is more accurate.

Of potential significance to opponents of new cruise facilities, the survey results show that less than 10% of stay-over visitors previously came to the Cayman Islands on a cruise ship, or the survey results show that over 90% of stay-over visitors have never been to the Cayman Islands on a cruise ship.

The other way for opponents of the pier to look at this is that the cruisers chose to return to Cayman over many other islands, most of which had piers. Not having a pier might make the island more enticing to return to.