Don't Stop The Carnival!

A friend of mine told me that he had received a call from his mother in Oregon who said that maybe he should move back to the mainland because she had seen an article in her local paper about all the crime here on the island. I decided to look for the article on the web. Although I never did find that article, I found articles in just about every other U.S. newspaper on the mainland. All of these articles brought to light two events that have had a serious impact on tourism here on our island. A typical article is the one by Susan Spano of the Los Angeles Times titled "Trouble in paradise" (read the article). I found it re-printed, or found similar articles, in various papers around the U.S including the Orlando Sentinel, the Boston Globe, New York Times, Duluth News Tribune - it was everywhere. The two events they mentioned were Fountain Valley, where 8 people were killed over 30 years ago, and Carnival Cruise Line pulling out of the island in May 2002. Travel writers need to get over Fountain Valley (see The Truth about Fountain Valley). They also might want to take a closer look as to why Carnival left the island.

When Carnival pulled out a Carnival spokesperson stated that the reason was two-fold. First that St. Croix not a strong draw from a marketing standpoint, and second that they had been having ongoing problems with crime against passengers and crew. But during the same period Celebrity cruise lines reported no crime and only had good things to say about the island. When you speak to residents here on the island, several other possible reasons enter the picture.

One reason for Carnival pulling out of St. Croix could have been that they were not making money here. Businesses on all the islands pay money to the Cruise Lines to have their operation "suggested" as a place you should visit while in port. Take dive operators for example. If a diver usually charges $75 for a 2 tank dive, the cruise lines would give the dive shop something like $45 and charge the passengers around $95. I have been told that they were making around $6000 in St. Croix and upwards of $50,000 to 75,000 in St. Thomas.

The V.I. government at one point was going to raise port fees on all the Virgin Islands. Carnival had an agreement with the government that if the government would not raise the docking fees that they would bring more people to the USVI ports of St. Thomas and St. Croix. After this agreement was made there was an unsuccessful attempt between Carnival and the VI Government at a development partnership at the Crown Bay cruise ship pier in St. Thomas. The Government pulled out of the partnership and many residents here cite wanting to punish the USVI government as the main reason the cruise ships pulled out of St. Croix. They could pull out of St. Croix, but because St. Thomas was such a popular destination, and they made money there, they could not pull out of St. Thomas. But they couldn't simply pull out of St. Croix and break their contract; they had to have a good reason.

They cited twelve incidences of crime against their passengers and crew as the reason. The police chief on St. Croix said that most of these could have been avoided, and that some of them involved crew in areas known for drugs or sex. But only half of the incidences were reported to the police. You would think that they would want the local police to have records of all crimes against passengers or crew. If all the crimes that occur at a given port are not reported to police it gives the Cruise Lines the ability to determine, to their advantage, which ports have the highest crime rates by showing these statistics when and if they want.

I am not trying to make excuses or to try to say that there is no crime here on the island of St. Croix. I would just like to try to put things a little more in perspective. There is crime here, but there is crime everywhere and even more crime in other major travel destinations. But St. Croix is not as important to the cruise ships or the travel industry as some of these other destinations, and for that reason, crime in locations that are important to them seems to get swept under the rug. There was a report on the radio on August 26, 2003 that the murder rate on Jamaica had climbed to 605. There was also an article in a local paper that same day that said that the murder rate in Puerto Rico was now over 500. Susan Spano mentioned in her article that in 2002 there were 30 homicides in the USVI (12 of those on St. Croix and none were tourists). Although light compared to other cruise ship destinations, the majority of the murders in the USVI were on St. Thomas.

I found this in a Frommers travel guide on the web.

"Safety -- U.S. Virgins -- St. John is relatively safe, even at night, but St. Thomas, especially around its capital, Charlotte Amalie, has the highest crime rate in the Virgin Islands. You may want to avoid it at night. St. Croix has less crime than St. Thomas but caution is advised, especially if you plan night visits to the dives of Frederiksted or Christiansted where muggings might occur."

Now if St. Thomas has the highest crime rate in the Virgin Islands why hasn't Carnival pulled out of St. Thomas, the Caribbean's busiest cruise-ship port. In fact, instead of leaving St. Thomas, they have actually increased their calls there.

I am not a statistics expert, but it makes sense to me that crime against tourists will follow crime in general. Like other places the crime on St. Croix is mainly poor on poor and usually drug related. We do have a high per-capita crime rate. But I feel that if the majority of crimes are happening in areas that I don't go to, then I won't have a problem. I avoid "dives". I like to spend my time at one of our great beaches or fine restaurants. The fact is that you can go on vacation and leave your boss behind, your mother in law behind and all of the things that are troubling you behind. But because the problems that are occurring on the mainland are also occurring at every travel destination you cannot leave your common sense behind.

This is not being written in an attempt to lure the cruise line back to our island. I personally don't care if they ever come back. I enjoy going to beaches that aren't packed with cruise ship passengers. Some of the local merchants called Carnival the K Mart boat, because the purchases by their passengers were mainly trinkets and most meals were consumed on the boat. We need to spend our efforts on tourists that will come, spend a week, take the time to meet the people, and see what our island is really about. But the pullout did hurt cab drivers, dive operators and other small business here on the island. Also passengers are good word-of-mouth advertising for the island. I have met people who came back to the island because they were here on a cruise ship and liked it so much. I was behind several women on a sidewalk in Christiansted and overheard them say how much they were enjoying the shopping. Unlike St. Thomas where people are hustling you and you are constantly being asked if you need a taxi, people on St. Croix are courteous, friendly and you can shop casually.

In my opinion Carnival did serious harm to this island. But the damage caused to the island is not only from the loss of money spent by the cruise ship passengers. The main damage occurred by presenting St. Croix as a crime-ridden destination when we are not. I can tell you this, if you come to St. Croix you will not have the managers of our resorts suggest that you not leave the resort as they do on some of those other islands that are more important to the travel industry.

PS - You won't catch that cruise ship intestinal disease here either.

Tips for having a safe vacation in the Caribbean

St. Croix Review Reviews
Whateverrrrr!

Don't Stop the Carnival
Why the cruise ships pulled out

The Truth about Fountain Valley
Our 30 year old shadow

We Want a Divorce!
Time for a change

Just Ask Marsha
Gossip On St. Croix