Curacao welcomes growth in tourism amid a bit of quandary

                                                                                                     By Hazel Heyer l Special to eTN


Curacao is experiencing growth in tourism, but not without a little bit of controversy.
Hospitality investors appear poised to invest in the Caribbean island of Curacao, thinking it is conducive to new, upcoming tourism business development. Since 2001, after holding the annual Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference, the country has seen increased interest to invest in the hotel/ tourism sector.

Renamed the Netherlands Antilles (as grouped by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) with Bonaire, Saba, Saint Eustatius and St. Martin when monitoring aggregate tourism data), Curacao is experiencing some traffic spurts. The UNWTO’s reports show Curacao received 222,000 guests in 2005. In January 2007, the Caribbean Tourism Organization reported a preliminary count within January- September 2006 of arrivals totaled at 172,479 with a five percent rise from the year previous, 3.9 percent rise over the winter season and 6 percent over the summer. Some 75,758 came from Europe while only 35,903 from the US.

Ahead, the World Travel & Tourism Council projects the Dutch Caribbean to rake in $1.742 billion and to increase by 4.0 percent in real growth in travel and tourism demand this year.

Recent economic performance reports show Curacao’s economic growth in 2006 was sustained by the encouraging performance of stay-over tourism. Rising occupancy triggered a wave of new hotel projects and expansion of existing properties. Chains like the Best Western, Clarion, Hyatt and Renaissance will soon be added to the hotel inventory that includes the Hilton, Howard Johnson, Marriott and Superclubs Breezes, as recent arrivals, according to Curacao Governor Lizanne Richards-Dindial.

The July 2006 opening of the new international airport, four miles from the capital Willemstad, has given the island a reason to forge ahead with plans to upgrade and annex major infrastructure. The Curacao Airport Partners, a consortium led by Alterra Partners (a Bechtel Enterprises and Singapore’s Changi Airport affiliate), developed and operates the airport after signing a contract August 2003 in the Netherlands Antilles. Strategically located 40 miles north of Venezuela, it offers easy convenience for transshipment/storage of good and fuel supply, as well as transit services for trans-Atlantic flights.

Despite rising competition from emerging economies in Asia and the Pacific, Curacao is prepared to create possibilities for growth in tourism. That is, if it can address certain issues in the regional economic growth level.

Dr. Elmsey Tromp, Central Bank governor (for Bank of the Netherlands Antilles), said the improvement of the investment climate is crucial. “More investments in the tourism industry will not only raise activities in the sector, but also stimulate additional investments in related sectors and hence contribute to economic expansion,” he said.

Outlining the policy agenda for a healthier investment climate, Tromp said the secret is in improving the quality of human resources, making the public sector more efficient, addressing the level of taxation and infrastructure deficiencies, diversifying the economy with more knowledge-based activities, and addressing the issue of crime.

In a bizarre turn of events during the Caribbean Hotel Tourism Investment Conference held last month, Jacob Gelt Dekker, founder of the Jade Foundation and owner of the 80-room luxury boutique village-resort complex Kura Hulanda (a Dutch Colonial historic district UNESCO World Heritage site), zoomed in on crime and drug issues affecting the island.

Dekker discouraged foreign investors from investing in the island by calling for an end to ten years of corruption, bad government, a 50 percent school drop-out rate, and crime wave after crime wave by a large group of so-called unemployed who refuse to enter the regular work force or participate in adult education.

He has since been declared persona non-grata about nine months ago by the authorities of Curacao and the Netherlands Antilles, who called for his removal from the island. “Party leaders called for a total boycott of our businesses, our hotels Kura Hulanda and related companies,” he said.

The multi-millionaire investor from Holland helped restore Curacao from a state of decline several years ago. In those days, he recalled the historic district of Otrobanda had fallen victim to desolation and crime, until he started to buy up the remaining ruins and bring about a new aura that resulted to the flagship of Curacao’s new image of tourism.

However, Dekker continued to torpedo the islands in his approach, saying the Caribbean’s largest industry with 25-30 percent of the Gross National Product is the narcotics industry. “Whether the Narco-industry found the Caribbean, or the Caribbean found the Narco-industry hardly matters. The Caribbean’s environment of cronyism, favoritism, nepotism, clientalism, bribery and corruption, total lack of transparency, a dependent judiciary and continuous strife towards isolationism was and is the ideal environment to make this illegitimate business flourish. But on this little island of Curacao we have nearly 150 security companies, about one per every 200 families.”

Nothing stops Dekker from criticizing his host country in which he has invested millions in the tourism sector. According to him, people of the Caribbean are tired of crime, violence, terror and harassment. “Internationalism, whether it is the UN, the EU or the USA, is forcing solid business practices, democracy with accountability, and independent judiciaries. And in little Curacao, we are celebrating a mega victory of law and order in the elections of a few weeks ago,” he said, reiterating the minimal environment for attracting capital to Curacao is a level playing field, transparency of government with checks and balances, independent judiciary and international law, agreements and integration.

In spite of his ongoing fight with the government, Dekker continues to develop Curacao’s tourism business. He just added a second Kura Hulanda Hotel under the Leading Hotels of the World banner. He built a kidney dialysis clinic catering to the need of the terminally ill on the island as well as, other medical tourism facilities. He built a grand museum, now open for nearly ten years, has gained great international acclaim and received hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world; a scientific library with nearly 10,000 publications about the region from the 1720s; opened a Desert Green House for cultures of strawberries, tomatoes and lettuce providing for much of the island’s need in the next six months, and a Marine Biology Research Project with acclaimed university back-up.

“Hundreds of publications, television programs, presentations and talks around the world have carried our initiative. Hundreds of millions of investment dollars have followed ours, and Curacao is booming with a thriving tourist industry today,” Dekker closed, as he hopes the hand that rocks the tourism cradle in Curacao could still be his ahead, despite the obvious quagmire.