The Anguilla Tourist Board organised a tent – with a number of arts and crafts displays, fine Anguillian music and decorations – to welcome two tourist boats to Road Bay, Sandy Ground, on Sunday, January 19. Unfortunately, The Sea Dream and the Star Flyer cruisers did not show up due to rough seas caused by inclement weather conditions which entered the north-east Caribbean over the weekend.
Mr. Jameel Rochester, Acting Corporate Affairs Manager, of the Anguilla Tourist Board, was at Road Bay to head the welcome team. “As you know, the cruise ship industry in Anguilla is very seasonal. It begins in November and ends around April,” he told The Anguillian newspaper. “These two ships usually come here before the hurricane season from Europe and the Mediterranean area. So what we in Anguilla are doing, as a destination, is capitalizing on our day excursionists travelling on these ships which tend to carry a high volume of passengers. In the past we have had large ships, like Seaborne Odyssey, that carry between 600 and 900 passengers – while smaller ships normally have 300 passengers once they are fully committed.
“We see an opportunity in the cruise sector to have day excursionists coming off the ships visiting Anguilla – and experiencing the totality of our destination. In order for us to improve our activities in this sector, we created a hospitality tent thus encouraging our local arts and crafts vendors, and other persons, to exhibit their products.
“If the ships had arrived today, we would also have had, for example, Tropical Treats, local artist Louise Brooks – with her paintings; other persons with locally-made soaps and other products; as well as Joseph Pradel providing massage services. Many times when cruise passengers come to Anguilla they want to purchase items made on the island, so we also had Iwassy coming with his conch shells carvings.”
Rochester continued: “We, at the Anguilla Tourist Board, see the importance of creating an environment that provides a ripple effect on our economy – by ensuring that our local partners have an opportunity to sell their products to tourists. We also want to have a hospitality desk – from the prospective of the Anguilla Tourist Board – with promotional brochures, fliers, maps and other material about our beaches, historical sites, historical trails; restaurants and even our hotels for those who want to relax in that environment. The Anguilla Tourist Board is also ‘beefing’ up our marketing research by having our representatives ask certain questions to the travellers on these small cruise ships so that, if necessary, we can change our strategy in attracting the cruisers to Anguilla.
“The questions would be about wh
at they would like to see; what was their purpose for coming to Anguilla; and what they expect. This would enable us to better diversify our cruise tourism sector which we realise is small. The Anguilla Tourist Board is not involved in mass tourism so we are not going to attract the Carnival line ships, and other big cruisers, because we cannot facilitate that high volume of passengers. What we can accommodate are the small luxury cruise lines, and their clientele, which are in line with our marketing strategy.”
Mr. Rochester added: “We want to make sure that we can facilitate the ships that are now coming to Anguilla. As new projects, like marinas, come to the island – in the future we will be able to attract more of these luxury ships.
“We notice that for our festive season we had a lot of luxury mega yachts visiting Anguilla, and we are continuing to see an increasing number of them on our shores – and we have been able to obtain some vital information about yachting to our destination. We will now be rolling out this information on our social media pages. We were pleased to have seen a high volume of these mega yachts in such areas as Rendezvous Bay, The Cove, Meads Bay, Road Bay and Crocus Bay. We also want to bring other types of sailing craft to the Anguilla destination – like in other destinations such as St. Barths and the British Virgin Islands where we see catamarans and other small sailing boats. We are therefore looking at different aspects of cruising and sailing, and how we can further promote this type of activity in Anguilla.”
