Anguilla does not seemingly have an official cruise ship policy in operation – and a proposed deep water harbour and mega yacht marina, which could provide ideal accommodation for the vessels, are still far away. But the very innovative Tourist Board is doing all it possibly can to lure small luxury cruisers, carrying a few hundred passengers, at the most, to the shores of the island.
There have been a number of calls to Anguilla, and other islands, by cruisers since the current cruise season started in November 2019. They have now returned to the Caribbean area from Europe, the Mediterranean area and the United States, following the end of the 2019 hurricane season. It is these small ships, like Star Flyer, Sea Dream, Sea Cloud and others, that the Anguilla Tourist Board is targeting. At least two of them were due to visit the island on Sunday, January 19, but high seas, influenced by a strong north-eastern weather system, stopped their arrival.
One of the ships, Sea Dream 1, dropped anchor just off Road Bay on Monday, January 27, carrying 107 passengers. The Anguilla Tourist Board was well prepared for the visit, having organised a number of arts and crafts producers to display their work on the beach. The exhibiters were the Tourist Board with a range of publicity material and a supply of tasty punch; artist Louise Brooks with some of artwork; Wanda Brooks with various other handicraft items; Carol Matthew and Rosena Richardson with souvenir clothing, trinkets and other items; Jimmy Carter and his daughter with organic chick peas, mussels and hot sauce for application; and I-Wassie-I with his glittering conch shell carvings of boats, fish, birds and other objects.
Excited by the stops at his exhibits by a number of visitors, I-Wassie-I commented: “My work is taking the world by storm. They are telling me that it is the first time they have seen this type of work in the Caribbean.” He got an idea for his artistry when he stumbled on an old conch shell at The Forest Bay and thought he could create souvenir items from it. Since then his carving work has been both prolific and rewarding.
The general disappointment at the arts and crafts display for the exhibitors, however, was that none of the visitors purchased a few, if any, of their exhibits. Not discouraged, the vendors say they will always be on hand when the cruise ship passengers visit Anguilla. A number of taxi-drivers, however, benefitted from transporting the cruise travelers to several parts of Anguilla.
An interesting side of the story was that several of the tourists were repeat visitors from various parts of the United States – some coming to the island since the 1990s.
Supervising the beach event were Jameel Rochester, Acting Manager, Corporate Affairs/Assistant Manager, Destination Experience, assisted by other Tourist Board representatives – Simonia William and Molentiya Samuel.
Asked for his comments, Mr. Rochester said: “This is the first time that the Anguilla Tourist Board did something like this. We want to promote our tourism and cruise sector even more. We see great opportunity in or day-trippers coming to the destination and we are hoping that we cn create an environment that gives our arts and crafts people to sell their products to our guests to take back home.”
He added: “We just want to try something new. Hopefully we can build on this concept and get more vendors involved. Our cruise sector is very small but there is a lot of potential and many people are interested to come to Anguilla.”
Meanwhile, a number of small luxury cruise ships will be visiting Anguilla during February, March and April. The last visit will be April 12. In addition to Sea Dream 1 & 2, Star Flyer 1 & 2 and Sea Cloud, are Wind Surf and Le Durmont D Urville.
