BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Tuesday October 20, 2015 – Government is implementing policy changes at Port Zante in an effort to deal with visitor harassment and prevent cruise ships from bypassing the country.
Minister of Tourism Lindsay Grant disclosed that some cruise lines have indicated that their passengers are complaining about tourist harassment whenever they visit the twin-island federation, prompting the Ministry of Tourism to implement measures with immediate effect to deal with the problem.
“I have been in the job now seven months and I believe I have gotten about 20 letters from the cruise lines about the harassment at Port Zante and what we are going to do at Port Zante to fix it. They have gone probably so far as to say that if we do not fix the problems that we have at Port Zante, they would be prepared to move the ships to other ports that are friendlier to them,” Grant said.
The tourism minister made it clear that the priority now cannot be just the few people who are at Port Zante jostling for business from the tourists, but the protection of the St. Kitts and Nevis tourism product.
The minister said that staff from his ministry has met all the stakeholders including taxi drivers, primate (monkey) vendors, storeowners and tour operators and that the majority of them agreed that the problem must be fixed.
“We’ve decided that the continued [practice] by the store owners at Port Zante of giving the taxi drivers and other persons bands to lure people into their stores, has to cease,” Grant explained.
“The persons at the front of the stores who are shouting out to visitors and handing out paraphernalia to lure people into stores, that came to an end [Monday].”
Taxi drivers have also been told that there will be a new policy of dispatching of taxis at Port Zante which, due to time and monetary constraints, will be implemented for next cruise tourism season.
The tourism minister said he visited Port Zante with a team from the ministry and spoke to store owners at Port Zante to get their feedback on the policy and, except for two store owners, they are in agreement with the policy.
Grant assured that measures are in place to have these new measures adequately policed.