Barbados’ primary cruise operations relocating to Miami

The Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI) is moving its primary cruise operations out of Bridgetown and into Miami as local stakeholders attempt to deepen relations with key partners, many of whom are based in the coastal metropolis.

At a joint press conference with Royal Caribbean Cruises CEO Michael Bailey at the annual Sea Trade Cruise Global Conference, Minister of Tourism and International Transport Senator Lisa Cummins said the office should be up and running by late summer.

She said some of the new offices are focused on finding employment opportunities for Barbadians in the industry and introducing potential cruise partners to curated, authentic Barbadian experiences that visitors can enjoy when they visit the island.

“All of the relationships with the cruise lines and partners like Michael and Royal Caribbean will be anchored out of our Miami office with support from our Barbados office so that we are constantly in recruiting mode, we are constantly in training mode, we are constantly in developmental mode,” Cummins told reporters.

“We are working with our partners on the ground in Barbados to bring them live and direct to our partners here in Miami and we are going to be ensuring that the Barbadian brand of hospitality is world-class, it is available and people are going to be able to see destination Barbados through our people, not just our people on island but our people who will be working on board the ships, who will be able to tell the story of who we are as Barbadians, while earning their livelihoods and that is a balance that we in the tourism team are very committed to,” she added.

The tourism minister said the transition, which includes the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. and the Barbados Port Inc., will focus on filling the post of Director of Cruise, which has been vacant for some time.

Cummins said: “We were rationalising how we would treat to the cruise industry, certainly during the pandemic, and one of the concerns we had, certainly in the tourism team in the absence of having that post filled, was ‘what is the business of cruise?’

“And so, we have applied that across the tourism sector as a whole – what is the business of tourism? And so, here we will be starting the office during the course of this year with a Senior Business Development Officer who is currently based at our headquarters in Barbados and they will transfer out to Miami. Then, once the office is definitively set up, we will have the new Director of Cruise recruited and they will be based here in Miami.

“But what I would say as well is that we are collaborating on this jointly with the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. and the Barbados Port Inc. because there must be that collaboration around how we attract ships in the terms of the marketing and how we facilitate ships in terms of ships actually arriving.

“That partnership is expected to evolve during the course of this month. We are expecting by late summer we should have that fully operationalised and by the time the winter season comes around our full operation out of Miami will be up and running,” she added.

Minister Cummins said the new strategy would come at minimal cost to Barbadian taxpayers because of an existing tourism country team at all the country’s high commissions and embassies across the world.

“We have Barbados tourism offices in Brussels, New York, London, and in Canada as well. So what we are doing is simply repurposing that which we already have and putting it into a far more strategic business framework. So, the beauty is that it doesn’t cost us anything new because the setup is already there. We are just using resources differently. It makes more sense for us to do it that way,” Cummins concluded. kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb