No major impact for island
from passport requirement
PHILIPSBURG--The outcry about the immense and damaging impact the US passport requirement, implemented in January, would have had on St. Maarten’s tourism industry may have been just a huge hurricane in a teacup, as industry officials report no major decline in arrivals.
Head of St. Maarten Tourist Bureau Regina LaBega said the intense US government campaign to inform its citizens about the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative helped to mitigate a crisis. “They did a good job with processing passports quickly and that helped us.”
The message of the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA) and Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) of “Life needs the Caribbean but you need a passport” also created awareness of the new travel requirements.
LaBega told The Daily Herald, “So far we [St. Maarten] have not been greatly impacted. I think the US government’s rigorous campaign helped.”
The US Passport office issued some 12 million new and renewed passports in 2006 leading up to January 2007. In the previous year, the office issued about 2 million passports.
St. Maarten Hospitality and Trade Association (SHTA) Board Member Keith Graham concurred with LaBega’s take on the impact of the passport requirement. In an effort to lessen the impact, SHTA has been offering travellers who got a new or renewed passport “100 St. Maarten Bucks” which is equivalent to US $100 worth of goods and services on the island.
“There was no mad rush for vouchers but there was a steady flow,” Graham said. The programme gave the destination “good exposure.”
However, there is no quantifiable way of measuring the requirements impact precisely, he added. “There is no way I can tell if my bookings are down that is directly related to the passport requirement because it can be other factors too. What we were very concerned about were last minute bookings.”
The timeshare sector gave the clearest indication that the requirement did not stop people from travelling to the island for their regular vacations. “We are at 87 per cent occupancy now and numbers have been high all through the winter,” St. Maarten Timeshare Association President Jules James said.
Timeshare owners went out and got their passports to safeguard their vacation times and to ensure they had their time in the sun, he said. “The timeshare sector safeguards itself.”
All industry officials agreed that there was gross overreaction about impact of the passport requirement. The increase attention helped to create the needed awareness that caused travellers to get their passports in order.
The travel initiative required all travellers returning or passing through the US to have a passport. This move by the US government to better secure its borders and prevent terrorist activities threatened as much as US $2.6 billion of visitor export earnings and more than 188,000 travel and tourism jobs, based on a World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) study.
St Maarten vacation rental
