Aruba: “The tourism has been doing a little better in the past months. Really?

One really needs to wonder whether anything can believed anymore coming from Aruba. Upon implementing the Tourism Fund, backed by the Central Bank, we hear more utter nonsense come from Aruban officials as to the state of their tourism. You have not been honest about Natalee Holloway, why would anyone think they would be honest about their tourism?

“That’s exactly what’s happening now”, said Eman.   “The tourism has been doing a little better in the past months.   The number of visitors has been dropping with a worrisome average of 15 percent in the past months.   Nevertheless, we noticed in the budget that the amount for tourism promotion was lowered with 5 million florins.  

When will any Aruban politician be truthfully with their own people? Your tourism has been doing better in the past months? Really? What planet do you live on? We like to call the one we are on earth.

• According to the Bank, the cruise passengers have dropped with almost 40 percent in October of this year (2005). The hotel occupancy was almost 78 percent in October 2005.
• 3rd Qtr 2005: The 3rd quarter from 2005 showed a -3.5% decrease of airline passengers.
• 4th Qtr 2005: 7.4% decrease passengers to Queen Beatrix Airport compared to 2004
• The airport of Aruba saw a drop of 12.8 percent in the number of handled passengers in the first quarter of this year.

The number of flight movements dropped with 2.8 percent, announced the Aruba Airport Authority. With 250.585 American passengers, the percentage is lower than last year in the first quarter, namely 15 percent.

• 1st Qtr 2006: In the monthly bulletin of April that the Central Bank of Aruba (CBA) published recently is stated that in the first quarter of 2006, 14.7 percent less tourists visited Aruba than in 2005.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  
• From those figures appeared that tourists in January 2006 spent 15.8 percent less than in 2005.

  

Improving? Hardly. Its getting worse if that is even possible. It has gone from single digit losses to consistent double digit quarterly decreases. Let alone not only is the number of tourists down to Aruba but the ones that actually go are paying less for a room. The only thing that appears to be increasing is inflation.So now with all this loss of government tax revenue from a depleted tourism industry, the people of Aruba will have further tax funded social programs taken away from them due to the fact that The Tourism fund will take its money from room taxes.

Once this national ordinance is passed, there will be a separate fund that is independent from the government treasury.   The Tourism-minister will use this fund to pay the pursuers of the promotion policy in the USA, Europe, and Latin America, without being impeded by the problems of liquidity by the rest of the government.   Ã‚  

The tourism fund will be nurtured by the proceeds of the hotel room tax, which means that the proceeds of the tourist sector will be used directly for the promotion of the tourism.  

Anyone want to guess who will lose out on this when such monies are taken from the general tax fund and specifically given to tourism for marketing purposes? That’s right the Aruban people. No wonder the socialized insurance industry could not pay for an Aruban womans brain  tumor treatment. Its all about the tourism at all cost.

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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”.

  

Ritz Carlton to Aruba … No Incentives … No Deal. Who Calls the shots in Aruba?

Something seems very fishy is Aruba. Check out why The Ritz Carlton claims they are going back on their deal. They claim the  Aruban government made promises and are not keeping them.  Import duty exemptions.  This shocks who?

The Ritz Carlton has informed the Aruban government that they are going back to their original plan for a high rise resort. The Ritz Carlton stated that the Aruban government has promised them incentives in granting them an exemption in paying import duties on building materials for the project. The Aruban government states that such an incentive is not legally possible because such a law was abolished in 2003.

Who promised who what? Just remember Aruba, internet search engines can be very  interesting.

(AM Digital, click on article to enlarge)

A couple questions come to mind when reading this story between The Ritz Carlton and the Aruban Government.

1. Who runs the show in Aruba as to what is and is not allowed to be built on the island? It would almost appear that the developers and foreign entity have more power to dictate what is built, when, where and how.

2. If a law was abolished in 2003 to provide incentives to developers in waiving import taxes, how could anything have been promised to The Ritz Carlton? Or is this a convenient way for the Ritz Carlton to back out of a previously existing deal and for the Aruban government to save face for what might be the real reason?

Could it be that the Ritz see the present tourism trend in Aruba and is not willing to commit the funds that they stated they would. They claimed they would opt away from the high-rise so not to interfere with wind patters for wind surfing. So much for that idea.Of course why would the Ritz hold to a deal, especially since import taxes have been increased by the Aruban  government that would eat into the Ritz’ bottom line.

Take a good look at this post from Aruba.com forum from November 2005 . Google can be so unforgiving. This post of a  newspaper article clearly states the deal has been made and tax incentives have been granted by the Aruban government. So who is not telling the truth? It would appear that Aruba did offer exemptions to the Ritz Carlton to make the deal. So who is fibbing?

ORANJESTAD-It is official and approved, Ritz Carlton will be operational in Aruba in 2008. This comes after 3 years of negotiations between Bazarian International Financial Associates the representatives of Ritz Carlton and the government of Aruba. The government of Aruba granted Ritz Carlton attractive incentives that include exemption of import duties.