While authorities in the tourism sector are still putting together the scheduled cruise calls for the upcoming cruise ship season, Minister of Tourism Carlos James says that the cruise bubble protocols are not likely to make a return.
Minister James, who was at the time speaking on the Issue At Hand program, said that while the cruise bubbles included fully vaccinated vendors, artisans, and tour guides, there was still a wide cross section of stakeholders who were excluded.
“This season I’m looking remove that restriction to facilitate free flow. One of the main reasons for that was that, even though we had the bubble and where we had vendors and artisans and tour guides who were fully vaccinated and participated within the bubble, you still did not capture a wide cross section of the stakeholders who rely heavily on the tourism dollar, that trickledown effect in terms of the economy,” James said.
The Tourism Minister said in an attempt to avoid isolating a cross section of the tourism stakeholders, the consideration for 2022 cruise ship season will be to remove the bubble.
He however noted that vaccination and mask wearing will be strongly encouraged despite the removal of the bubble.
The bubble protocols were introduced during last year’s cruise ship season to facilitate the disembarking and visiting of SVG’s sites by cruise ships’ guests.
Although the scheduled calls for this year’s season are still being put together, according to Minister James, the numbers are anticipated to be same or even greater than last year.