100 August 2016 - Business View Caribbean
CABLE
: You find that a number of local persons are di-
versifying into the allied trades around tourism, other
than the crowd vending and so on. They are getting into
spas and lots of different types of tours – you’re hav-
ing mountain-type tours, you’re having different types
of safaris, etc. And so, people are coming up with cre-
ative ideas, some are getting Caribbean animals into
petting zoos and these are sometimes very attractive
to families as they come off the ship. So, these are the
kinds of areas that are being investigated by many per-
sons. Even some from overseas are coming with these
ideas. You might have heard of the zip lines and now
these are in the Caribbean, too.
BV: Looking ahead five years, what do you want to have hap-
pen? What needs to happen to ensure the business climate
and the health of the island?
CABLE
: What needs to happen is that a lot of cogni-
zance needs to be given to regulations. The island gov-
ernment does not have the kind of infrastructure to
monitor a lot of the activities that have taken place.
And therefore, we need to be ensured that our wa-
ter supply remains stable, remains high quality and
remains sustainable. Sustainable tourism has to be
the watch word now, so that in five years time, we do
not start to regret overuse of our land resources and
marine resources, etc. But the potential is there for it
to be a very massive type of expansion, and we could
even double or triple the 2,000 or 1,500 rooms that
we have on the island at the moment on the two is-
lands.
BV: How important is an uptick in cruise tourism?
CABLE
: It goes up by about 5 percent each year. And we
have one jetty here where ships can dock, we take one
ship on either side, and we are putting in a second,
because right now, on some days, we have four cruise
ships on the one day, and these are each with about
2,500-3,000 people aboard, and two of them would
have to anchor away from the shore and you lose at-
tention. So this second pier has been put in and this
could lead to a massive upswing in cruise tourism.
BV: How much competition is there between St. Kitts and
Nevis and other places? Are you all looking for the same
people?
CABLE
: Yes, we are looking for the same people. There
is tremendous competition. However, the point is that,
most visitors, once they become attached to one is-
