While Tourism Commissioner Rafael Jackson is reporting a sharp upswing in the number of visitors to the territory, hoteliers on St. Croix aren’t so upbeat.
Between March and June of this year, the three major tour wholesalers serving the Virgin Islands reported an increase of 23 percent in airline arrivals and hotel occupancy compared to the same period last year, Jackson said at a press conference Thursday on St. Croix. He said one operator had seen a 40 percent increase.
And, Jackson said, the forecast for December is ahead of last year as well.
"It appears things are on an upswing," he said. "I’d like to think it is the advertising since March."
Asked to comment on the commissioner's remarks, Wendell Snider, president of the St. Croix Hotel and Tourism Association and general manager of the Hibiscus Beach Hotel, said he believes that "as a whole" tourism in the territory "is actually down."
The members of the hotel association, which represents 82 percent of the hotel rooms on St. Croix, are reporting a "mixed bag" as far as occupancy, Snider said. Hotels that are marketing their properties aggressively themselves are doing better than those that aren’t, he said.
The member hotels are showing occupancy rates averaging 45 to 50 percent. The ideal rate, he said, would be 65 to 75 percent.
Snider credited any increases in air passenger load to St. Croix to the start of Hovensa’s latest expansion project. "The increase in arrivals is because of the coker starting," he said. "The same mistake was made because of the cat cracker," he said, referring to the similarly big-ticket catalytic cracker construction project at the refinery in the mid-1990s.
Snider emphasized that he wasn’t downplaying the effect of the Tourism Department’s summer travel advertising blitz last spring. "That had to have had some benefit," he said. "I’m of the opinion that there is no such thing as bad advertising. We just haven’t had enough of it."
Also asked to respond, Peter Locke, president of the island's other hospitality association, the St. Croix Accommodations Council, and owner of the Chenay Bay Resort, gave some credit to the Tourism advertising effort. But he said his hotel is doing well because of the deep discounts he is giving on rooms.
"It has absolutely nothing to do with the efforts of the Department of Tourism or their destination marketing," he said Thursday afternoon. "I think we’re busier because we’re heavily discounting our rates. It’s a difference of losing $10,000 or $50,000."
The 19 members of the Accommodations Council are averaging 50 percent occupancy when the "break-even point" is 60 percent, Locke said.
Jackson, meanwhile, said the department recently entered into contracts to have South American and European travel agents represent the Virgin Islands. The South American representative is based in Argentina and will also be responsible for Brazil, while the European representative is in Italy and will also cover Spain, he said.
Also, he said, the contract for the territory's representative in Denmark has been expanded to include Norway.
