Aruba Creating Tourism Fund; At this Point You will have to do more than that to Market Aruba

Aruban Fund to Promote Tourism, Room tax to promote Tourism

aka … Robbing Peter to pay Paul

Without dealing with the real issue as to why tourists are not coming to Aruba, they can spend all the money they like, it will make no difference.

(AM Digital, click on article to enlarge)

According to the AM Digital article,

Tourism fund will be financed by revenues received from room taxes. This way the promotion of tourism will not depend on the Government or on the Ministers of Tourism and Finance to funds available. The funds are already there.

For some reason Aruba thinks that this will create a scenario that there will be no situation where sufficient funds will not be available to promote tourism.

Someone may need to explain to Aruba that there is no guarantee of room tax money to promote tourism. They are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Aruba, a room tax vs. and import tax is just one pocket of the Aruba tax base. To suddenly take the room tax and put it toward the promotion of tourism means that the social programs where this room tax money was being spent is now going without.

This year the tourism budget dropped from 33 to 28 million florins.

No matter how one looks at this situation, without tourism and the taxes that Aruba has become accustomed to from that tourism … they are hurting.

It is hard to imagine that Aruba still thinks that they can market their way out of their tourism decline. You can spend all the money you want to try and convince people, but as some of your front page commenters have stated without dealing with the root issue, finding Natalee and prosecuting those responsible your marketing efforts are just be  … “lip-sticking a pig”.