Dear Editor,

“Among the ships being recycled at Aliaga are three Carnival cruise liners — Inspiration, Imagination and Fantasy — which had just been refurbished in 2019. The world’s largest cruise company reported a loss of US$2.9 billion in the quarter ending on August 31 and announced that it would remove 13 of its older, less-efficient ships from its global fleet.”

The above quote is from an article in the Friday, October 30, 2020 edition of The New York Times, headlined ‘Where cruise ships are sent to die’. According to the article, a number of cruise lines are retiring ships as part of their reorganised business models resulting from the novel coronavirus pandemic which has negatively impacted the cruise industry. While most are the older vessels from among their fleets, others are recently refurbished. These ships are being sent to Turkey to be sold as scrap iron.

These cruise ship companies have made billions over the years plying the Caribbean Sea and the exotic islands of the region. It shouldn’t be too difficult for one of the companies to donate a ship to the Caribbean region through the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) to undertake intra-regional travel and tourism. Promoting intra-regional tourism would certainly help to strengthen regional integration at the people level. An intra-regional cruise tourism service would also help Caribbean people to learn more about their neighbours while affording them an opportunity for leisure and relaxation that may not be otherwise affordable.

I call on Caricom, other regional governments, and the CTO to look into the possibility of my suggestion. Discussions could also be had with the US Government to offer the donor cruise line company a tax incentive for its donation, which would offset the revenue it would have earned from a scrap metal sale.

Wesley Kirton

wesleykirton@aol.com