Premier: Stay-over tourism a massive failure
(CNS): Despite record-breaking overnight visitor numbers in recent years that fuelled a massive boom in tourism, Premier Alden McLaughlin has described stay-over tourism as a “massive failure” when it comes to creating jobs for local people. McLaughlin said that 70% of tourism workers are expatriates, and while he accepted there “was an ugly side to cruise tourism”, Cayman had not found a way for stay-over tourism to work for its people.
Responding to questions from CNS at Wednesday’s COVID-19 briefing on the recent paper by the National Conservation Council and the Department of Environment about the opportunity to green the post-COVID-19 economy, the premier criticised the paper’s position on tourism.
He said there were some observations and recommendations in the document that government should take a long hard look at. But he also derided the recommendations, saying he couldn’t find anything in it that spoke about how to feed the people, and that it was laudable but idealistic.
McLaughlin said the authors’ “definition of sustainable tourism” was different to his or that held by government. Sustainable tourism must include the ability of local people to earn a living from the tourism product, he added.
“Stay-over tourism has been a massive failure for Cayman in that regard. Seventy percent of the persons who are engaged in sustainable tourism in Cayman are expats,” the premier said.
“While I agree entirely that it puts much less strain on the infrastructure and ecology… than cruise tourism and there is definitely a very ugly side to cruise tourism, I am not sure that stay-over tourism in its current form is really the best thing that Cayman has ever seen,” he said. “We have not found a way for it to really work for the vast majority of people that are employed in that industry.”
McLaughlin spoke about a need for a long critical look at the tourism product. He said a lot of people in Cayman were making a lot of money in stay-over tourism but he did not think many of them were Caymanian.
He also suggested, when asked, that it was not just about government policy or work permits, and that refusing permits would just prevent businesses from being able to operate. He said that for many years, for one reason or another, Caymanians had gradually become a much smaller percentage of those engaged in stay-over tourism.
However, he acknowledged that over the years billions of dollars has been invested in tourism. “We have just got to find a way, I believe, to make it work for our people,” he added.
Referring to hotels and condos, he pointed out that Caymanians were not the owners and that the wages paid to those working in overnight tourism were so low that most Caymanians won’t do those jobs. He said there was a complex set of factors operating that he thought about all the time.
But the premier said that COVID-19 had provided the opportunity to pause and think again about Cayman’s economy, noting that under normal circumstances it would be difficult to make changes that could threaten people’s income.
“Now we have got thousands of people unemployed, hotels are shut down, condominiums are shut down, and we are shuttling hundreds of expat workers back home,” he added.
McLaughlin said he had recently asked a leading operator in the tourism sector how do we get local people to work in the industry, saying that was the big challenge and the big question. But he said it was not a simple case of just giving the jobs to Caymanians as they had to be able to do the work or want to do the work in the first place.
See the full press briefing below, set to start at the CNS question about the NCC/DoE paper on transitioning to a greener economy (which is in the CNS Library here:
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Irrespective of how many low wage jobs the industry provides directly to foreigners the income from import duties, work permits and tourist taxes must employ several thousand high wage Caymanian civil servants! What a bizarre comment from the Premier.
Where is the MOT in all these tourism related discussions?
‘MIAMI (AP) ā The Cruise Lines International Association announced Friday that ships will not be sailing from U.S. ports throughout the summer, extending a pause put in place because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The current no-sail order issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on March 14 is set to expire July 24. The association says cruise lines have decided to voluntarily prolong this pause until Sept. 15 because they need time āto resolve barriersā with U.S. authorities to restart sailing.
āAlthough we are confident that future cruises will be healthy and safe, and will fully reflect the latest protective measures, we also feel that it is appropriate to err on the side of caution to help ensure the best interests of our passengers and crew members,” the statement said.
The industry association said they are consulting with the CDC on the appropriate measures to resume cruise travel. The association represents 95% of the global cruise industry.
Carnival Cruise Line had announced last month that it was planning to restart cruising from Florida and Texas in August.’
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Anyone out there seriously believe that the cruise industry will ever recover from this? I bet right now the major players are looking for a convenient exit strategy and most of the older ships we’ve got used to seeing here are headed for some third world beachfront junkyard.
We can but wish…. hope you are right!!
As they should be.
I worked in hospitality for 20 years, starting as a pot washer, and finished when I sold my own business. I’ve employed hundreds of people from all over the world,and trained most of my staff myself.
Now I live here, and want to make it home. I want to help build Cayman, and the Caymanian people up. However, there seems to be an overriding cultural problem here. Many caymanians I’ve met just simply do not have the personality for hospitality, and most see it as beneath them.
I know a few employers in different areas of tourism, some expat, some Caymanian. All of them tell the same stories of Caymanians they’ve employed. From the girl who didn’t turn up to work for 3 days because a storm blew a branch down on her drive despite the fact she walked to work, to a dive company that has been trying to train caymanians as divemasters and boat captains for decades, yet not one has lasted, and now all their dive staff are brits and Americans who love their work.
Sure, there are a large number of factors that lead to low Caymanian involvement in tourism, but we need to look at ourselves too. Blame anyone you like, but there needs to be some acceptance of our own problems too.
No matter what Alden, or any other vote-grabber tells you, there is no single answer, and some of the problems can be tackled right in our own heads.
Slate me as an outsider, an expat, an immigrant if you want, but am I wrong? It might grate to hear a newcomer use “we” when talking about Caymanians, but what would you prefer? Surely integrating into this culture, and offering my experience to benefit my new countrymen and women is what has been lacking for a long time?
Don’t worry, mate, you’re fine with we.
By focusing on the lady in your third paragraph (an easy excuse) we miss the point that its about the pay (and the perceived prestige which goes along with it). I know people who as kids went through dive master training with a local dive company. They worked summers getting trained up but now have jobs in other local businesses that they love that pay much better than anyone at that company short of a few top jobs. (And better than the owner/operator of some of the smaller dive companies, without the financial risk the owner/operator carries themself.) The problem the tourism industry has for employing Caymanians is that you’re competing for us against other industries that will pay us more and that are more socially respected.
And before any idiot calls me entitled for wanting the best job I can get, check your entitlement at the keyboard for wanting employees to work for peanuts.
pay is definitely a factor, but there is very good money in hospitality, if you are good at it, and willing to work hard.
Many servers take home $50k+ a year, and some hit $100k.
Even dive staff, who are very low paid, can make $4-5k a month.
The money is there, if people want it.
I totally agree, though, that there are plenty of roles that don’t pay enough to live comfortably, and that is definitely one of the areas we need to address.
Really, you are here to help build a Cayman and Caymanian people. How noble of you.
No, I’m here because I want to be here.
I have skills and knowledge that may be of use to the people of my new country, and i’m willing to offer it, if it is of any value or use.
Please don’t waste your energy trying to paint any outsider looking to offer help as some kind of colonialist. All you do is push people away from contributing, and perpetuating the us vs them narrative that is causing us all so many problems
Raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour would go a long way to getting more Caymanians into the tourism sector. The current minimum wage is so low that nobody realistically can live permanently on that wage.
totally agree, but I would add an exception for roles that earn gratuities.
Stop the automatic gratuities. Make it min $10 hour with discretionary gratuities.
Just flip the question, how is our tourism product going to work without Indians and Philippines nationals all and sundry at lower wages
Easy higher wages for Caymanians and lower margins for owners.
Mr. Premier doesnt have to worry. Aircraft flights won’t be cheap or easily available so its back to the 1980s. And this is great news for Caymanians
Bad news for work permit fees and a lot less conferences and travel for the civil service… Opps…hahaha
The civil service is certainly going to miss all those overseas conferences and more limited travel.
Hmmmm. Expats can live here on the tourism pay, so why cant a Caymanian? Because they think its beneath them and they want fancy cars, that’s why!
You mean I can’t want a fancy car? Yes, massa, sorry, massa.
You can want a fancy car, but get real. All countries are the same. The vast majority of people earn minimum wage or not much more. Time to wake up. If you dont want expats, you will have to do these jobs. Otherwise, no tourism industry and no Burger King, KFC etc. For your breakfast. I’m a born Caymanian who has worked the low paid jobs and worked my way up, just like alot of people. Grow up
Excellent point sir. Many Caymanians see these jobs as below them and they also have poor work attitudes. You see it in the work ethics as early as when they’re in high school. The expats seems to want it more so they put more emphasis on their jobs. Many employers also think they generally work harder than local Caymanians…
Almost everyone wants fancy this or that. Sadly, many who aspire to can’t actually afford to. I see designer glasses, lastest phone, fancy car associated with many people who work in a job that “shouldn’t” really be able to afford such items, yet they do. So priorities may be skewed.
We should all aspire to go for what we want, but do we really NEED it?
Feed and clothes for your kids and a leak proof roof is more important.
Expats don’t live here. They survive. Big difference.
WRONG! It is mainly because Caymanians have extended family to support, usually the elderly since social services programs are insufficient to meet those needs. This is unlike other countries where their nationals can book their old folk into a govt run home then traipse off to the Caribbean to earn minimum wage, without much care in the world except for themselves.
Caymanians cannot support their family and extended family on minimum wage. It’s not an apples to apple argument because the needs are different.
Last point to note: Caymanians built the tourism industry long before you showed up to judge us and take advantage of our hospitality.
Never could figure out why there were so many Canadians working in the tourism sector here. Maybe they just love the sun āļø āļø.
No, the expatriates cannot āliveā here. They exist. No mortgage, no car loan, no saving for a meaningful retirement. Not even a rented bedroom to themselves…
The Premier’s comments that stay-over tourism is a “failure” for Caymanians are recklessly and disappointingly defeatist – but in these times they are sadly true. But he is among the successive politicians who have made it and kept it so for 30+ years!!
I see comments relating to the 70s & 80s when our tourism product was just becoming broadly marketed and when the tourism industry was dominated by Caymanians. The experience that visitors got when they came is what brought them and their friends again and again – meeting and being catered to by Caymanians in the industry. There are many, many cases of visitors forming long friendships with many hotel and restaurant staff from back in those days. I see responses that Caymanians of that era were of a different work-ethic who didn’t mind doing service-industry jobs. I see comments that improving the minimum wage might attract more Caymanians into the industry today. I see comments about improving education standards which may also help. In that case more and better educated people may qualify for higher level jobs within or outside the tourism industry, or alternately could better see and appreciate other opportunities within the industry and be prepared to “work their way up” – once that opportunity genuinely exists.
I agree with all those opinions and they could all work because they worked for our society before. Yes, these are different times, generations, attitudes but without successive Government “buy-in” to the reality that Caymanians could be a major part of the stay-over tourism industry again, they will never undertake the changes needed to make that happen again.
Instead, successive Governments have made work permit revenues a major source of their funding, and as long a that remains true, Caymanians in any sector will always be at a disadvantage and in the minority. Further, the education system has repeatedly failed to create, stimulate and interest school-children of the benefits of working in service jobs which support the tourism industry. In the early 1980s a rudimentary “hotel-training” school was started; today such a program still exists in the UCCI curriculum (I think – at least until a few years ago). Yet, how successful have those “training” programs been over the past 40 years? I know a handful of young Caymanians who have completed such programs and some have been employed in the hotel industry but it is literally a “handful” over all those years, as compared to the vastly larger number of work-permit holders who have been imported. There’s no way that any training program which has only provided a dozen or two (at the very most) successes in 40 years can be considered successful!
Until our successive Governments understand, accept and take measures to ensure that, at the very least:
(a) there must be other revenue sources to off-set or replace work permit revenues and thus reduce the numbers of imported labour – across the board, not just in tourism but all service and technical industries;
(b) improve the education system so as to encourage interest and respect for service industry jobs amongst school-children; provide the academic, technical and vocational training in order to properly groom and prepare kids for such jobs (stop paying lip-service to vocational training and GET IT DONE!);
(c) improve minimum wage standards to allow locals to be able to provide a respectable standard of life for themselves and their families, in consideration to our general high costs of living;
(d) STOP spouting BS about companies being required to train Caymanians for upward mobility within their organizations and ENSURE THAT IT IS DONE!! As far as I know, there are laws and regulations to ensure this but they are ignored by many institutions and not enforced by Government!
(e) direct measures to ensure lower health insurance costs!
There are many more actions that any Government could take to ensure that Caymanians would be willing to enter the tourism industry and indeed, all other service industries but until we have a Government which is willing to bite the bullet for Caymanians and take actions such as those I’ve suggested above, instead of always pandering to “big business”, a bullying financial industry and their own desire to grab more work permit revenues, then Caymanians will keep being pushed further down the ladder of “success” in their own country.
Ezzard Miller is presently the only politician who has Caymanians interests truly at heart but people won’t take time to understand this and instead label him as “anti-foreigner”, which he is not. There is a big difference!!
Ezzard for Premier!!
Panton for Premier. Ezzard knows nothing about the environment and has done nothing for the sector. He should be put out to pasture like all the other old boys and girls who have been in politics for well over 20 years.
worse part about this problem is that our caymanian culture is being told by expats not that some of us caymanians do a better job
Alden’s interview sounds to me to be great news!
First, with the total failure of the overnight tourism industry, it seems like all HOTEL/CONDO construction should halt immediately. Hopefully, the new Hyatt developers will be able to absorb the loss now while it is at a minimum. That would be better than later with higher losses having to deal with displacing more foreign workers.
In the second place, that also means any MONSTER hotel on the Westbay Road overpass will never come to be. That’s a win-win both for the environment and for Caymanian people. Who wants to look at that monster while driving about town?
Good Job, Alden —– you torpedoed both construction and tourism. Both industries are employers of foreigners.
Wow Aldart has actually started repeating the same anti-caymanian chants of anti-caymanian residents. What a pile of s…
12.53. Remember Casa Bertma , Sunset glad it is still around and of course the Seaview , a gathering place for all. That leaves the Bayview. Happy days they were.
Chris the world moves on and living in the past is not an attractive trait. Would you want to go back to the mosquito infested days? No running water? No electricity. No mansions on the beach?
These are still happy days. Take a walk at sunset along the beach. Be grateful for what is naturally here. No bar needed.
This gowerment has been a massive failure, just like the one before it but as the saying goes, shame shyte different pile.
Bye Aldart. Thanks for nothing.
You said it ” Caymanians wont do these jobs”. It’s up to you and your government to put a strategy in place so caymanians will do these jobs. Let’s see what you can come up with. For reference, I am a Caymanian and worked in tourism in the food and beverage industry for almost 20 years until recently. let me just say that although the current hourly wage is poor and always has been , the real money is made on gratuity or tips from your customers. $1000 a week easy(40 hrs) inclusive and more in high season just for being nice , polite and efficient serving a few drinks and some food … the mindset needs to change . There is a lot of money to be made in this part of our tourism industry.
Not unique to Cayman- here are observations I’ve made in Western economies the past few years.
What has caused the electorate to turn to various levels of Government, to solve or fix every problem society faces? What stops adults from stepping up and doing the work that others won’t? As a short term step to something better. To encourage children to work in any industry and start earning money in their teens before setting off to school.
What happened to the mentality once embraced by employers that recognized low paying service industry jobs was valuable experience for youth for their teamwork and customer service skills they helped develop?
Or packing groceries at one of the three family owned stores?
What are the parents telling kids when the child want the fancy car that will saddle them with a big insurance bill? When the teen would be well served by a ‘runner’ of a car and learn to embrace imperfections instead of entitlements?
Entitlement culture is high. Motivation low. Where is the disconnect in our society and why is the knee jerk reaction most often to turn to Government to solve instead of asking oneself, what can I do to improve this situation?
Create a living minimum wage and Caymanians will take those jobs. Not having it is the reason you have to bring in people from other countries where they make nothing. Try it and see what happens.
Cayman islands is already one of the most if not the most expensive place to live on the planet. If expats can move here and make a living on that wage than why can’t Caymanians? Answer: They can. They just don’t want to work in a service industry. Serving another person is culturally not OK. Their family and friends will make fun of them. How to fix that? How about going to work and proving them wrong. Try that and see what happens.
But the government doesnāt get paid if thereās not work permit fees. So then that means there will be higher customs and duty charges which means weāre taxed even more heavily.
Our wages go up too
Or just āright sizeā the civil service (many of whom are expats).
Who’s fault is that? Have incentives for Caymanians to work in the stay-over tourism industry. Have Caymanian owned hotels. Do something about it, don’t just sit there and say it’s a massive failure when you are responsible for the failure.
Cruise tourism is a massive failure. Cheap, disgusting people with no manners flooding the streets.
They smell of elderberries, too.
Only their mothers.
And Dingle Berries
Blocking up George Town and causing more traffic
Prepare yourselves for more bad news Cayman. This is just the beginning.
No duh, Einstein.
After 11 years in the stay over tourism field he is right. Many times I have seen qualified Caymanians pasted over for management jobs because management gives these jobs to their friends so the can build their cv and move to the us. Anyone who has worked at the Ritz would know this.
Even Caymanians don’t hire Caymanians over expats. They want and need qualities that can not be found on island. Cry and rant all you want but until Caymanians can work as well as expats all your whining and anti expat bitching will change nothing in that regard. Everyone knows this.
You sound like a broken record. Managers hire people who work and can be relied on.
I was college educated and had several years of professional experience in my home country when immigrated to the US with 2 kids. Nobody would hire me since I had no work experience in the US and a foreign diploma.
Finally, I was hired by a gift shops chain $6.50/hr. Night shift in a hotelā gift shop. I was spending more on gas to get to work than I was paid by my employer.
7 years later I purchased brand new condo, completed educational requirements for a professional exam, passed it, got certified and licensed.
And now (prior epidemic) I buy $300 dresses in Cayman without a blink and pay cash for a brand new car. No loans.
So stop whining . If I could do it, so can you.
They give it to people who will turn up on time and stay off their phones for 2 minutes.
No, they give it to their friend who works at the beach bar who want to move to the us but needs management experience, so he takes the bell stand job, realizing he makes more at the beach as a server than a bell stand manager he transfers back to the beach. The entire time no Caymanian was looked at for those positions or even transferred from other departments.
Roy Tatum: “Boss, we are getting a lot of grief about not reopening the airport and getting tourism back under way. Its starting to be an issue amongst voters. Should we reconsider?” Alden ” No – we can deal with the voter backlash by just telling them that no Caymanians work in the industry anyway, so it will only benefit work permit holders and foreign investors. The anti foreigner dog whistle always works. We will just borrow $500m and fling it at the civil service and NAU – that will sort it.”
Well Alden, suspect you are going to find out pretty quickly how much of a failure stay over tourism is for ordinary Caymanians when you try and provide them with public services but government revenue is through the floor because of the tourism shut down. You cant be that dumb – whats the matter, getting a bit crochety because of all the lobbying to reopen the airport? Still sore over the cruise ship pier fiasco?
So the same man that says getting the construction industry back to work – where the majority of the labour is expat – is critical to the economy because of the trickle down effect of their spend in the wider economy is completely blind to how much stay over tourism operators and their employees spend in the local economy, or the amount of tax collected by the government on everything from accommodation tax to food and beverages purchases, the amount spend by stay over tourists themselves on having a good time, before you even factor in the work permit fees and the duty charged on everything? He is either dumb or duplicitous – got a feeling that if he can master the concept of the multiplier effect in regard to construction its not the former.
Your looking at it the wrong way friend, its about deposits paid, lenders involved and contracts in place. You haven’t seen anything yet.. Wait 6 months going be reeling round yah
That explains why the industry and the developers – including the biggest developer on the island – would have pressed him to do so, but that was not the rationale he used. Nor should it be – a private sector developer losing his shirt on a development is not a reason for government intervention. So we are back to the same point – if it makes macroeconomic sense to re open construction, why is tourism different?
Not to worry though. Once the owner of nearly all the 5 start accommodation on the island has a word, the tune will change.
Can you say āelection seasonā. Alden you been in power for TWO terms. You only realize this now???!! Yeah right.
he said he won’t be running
Hes said a lot of crazy stuff.
He gonna run but have a premonition he isn’t going to get re-elected
Did you see his man of the soil puff piece on CIG TV? He says he doesn’t want the job as Premier, not that he wont be running. In fact he specifically says he will run if his constituents want him to. And when a politician tells you they are not seeking high office or an appointment but will consider it if asked to make that sacrifice…..
Still banging on about a new cruise dock?
Does he think the cruise market makes Caymanians more employed? It will only make the rich ones richer. It does not benefit the regular Caymanian.
Besides, Civil Service is the way to settle in.
Alden speaks out of his a$$ again for the world to see.
He is a walking contradiction and has had the opportunity during his political life and two terms as Premier to implement policies that would become the platform for change in education and Caymanian training and labor.
He has failed miserably and his lame duck status makes him reckless and dangerous. His hand picked successor as leader of the ppm is even worse and controlled by the same groups that have turned Alden into the clown he has become. A brain is terrible thing to waste. So much promised yet so little achieved to benefit the Caymanians. But at least his hair was always perfectly quaffed and he served his masters well.
After 20 years as a MLA his political career can best be described as disconnected, self absorbed and an expense failure for Caymanian people.
I remember the days when the Holiday Inn, Royal Palms, Coral Caymanian, Caribbean Club, Galleon Beach, Beach Club and many others had a vast majority of Caymanians and they were successfully run and the tourists loved to mix with the locals at all of these hotels. Now the tourists come to these big hotels, donāt see a single Caymanian. If you want to get overnight tourism back on track, look to where we came from and how it was done back then.
That was a different generation of Caymanians working at those hotels back in the 60s and 70s. The younger generation all want to become lawyers, accountants, bankers or gangsters, all of which pay more, offer better working hours and don’t require you to sweat or be nice to tourists in order to get a good tip.
10:34 Don’t forget architects. I interviewed four High School drop-outs who couldn’t find work some years ago and they all thought that not only did it sound like a good job but some nice ex-pat company would pay for their training. It didn’t seem to enter their calculations that you needed some pretty decent grades to even get on the bottom rung of that ladder. They were sitting on their backsides waiting for the offers to roll in, not getting out and doing anything about it.
I also remember R-C’s initiative to employ local staff. Can’t fault the hotel for their intentions by it never worked out for them. I went there for a meeting one time and trying to get sense out of the two locals running reception was just a waste of time. In the end their supervisor (who was an ex-pat) had to step in to sort the mess out.
And it goes on and on and on. Way too many stories from the past decade for me to take the Premier’s comments seriously – he really needs to get out and about more.
No, he just needs to get out, and take most of the rest of them with him.
What I was trying to say in my comment above is that no Caymanian wants to be enslaved. Back in the older hotels that are no longer around, they were owned by Caymanians and Caymanians worked for Caymanians. Nowadays, I see many status holders who enslave Caymanians. Also I find that work permit holders do not like to work with Caymanians. I can very well attest to that! I have seen many Caymanians put down in places of employment over this very issue, and Caymanians have been fired too for being put down. Just because someone has papers, does not mean they have a Caymanian heart!
Pay a livable minimum wage.
Back then the wages in stay over tourism were much higher than they are now..
So true, entitled kids
It seems that the Caymanian work culture has changed.
They are not going to work for US $5.00 an hour like the imported labor. Increase the salary and they will.
and stay over tourism has never been more successful than in recent years…so what is your point?
Other islands were closed due to hurricane damage
Successful fo who? Certainly not the Caymanian people.
so we should revert to a past that has seen most of the mentioned businesses fail?
Raise the minimum wage and Caymanians will work again in the tourism industry.
Not going to happen. Caymanians that will not work will end up living with Grandma and or going to jail.
There is no free lunch. We have all had good times and now it is time to suck it up and eat less. Time to lose weight and get a job. Reality check. We are all enslaved to someone. That is why it is called work. Life is hard.
10.28am and Pageant Beach.
Pageant beach didnāt have a bar.
A crisis causes many problems, but it also creates opportunities for innovation across many industries.
Yet, Premier is unable to see that fundamental intellectual and educational reforms that would completely revolutionize Cayman educational system is the first step to break from tourism dependency.
He continues focusing on uneducated, unskilled and unemployable in the real world people. He doesn’t even ask why 70% of workforce in stay-over tourism are expats.
What do you mean? He spent many millions on the school buildings. Alden has proven time and again that he is incapable of connecting dots.
The main reason why this will never get fixed. Education has never been a thing in this culture and it is even worst now with the shutdown. These kids will never be able to compete in the modern world. How do the uneducated, unskilled, and unemployable live in other countries? Welfare. Just like here.
It was a thing in the 70ās and 80ās so not sure what culture you are talking about, other than those that have been imported.
He needs the votes…keep them uneducated, unskilled and unemployable is right but you forgot keep them dependent on NAU.
The NAU is just a way to channel payoffs to ensure votes as it was becoming to blatants with the fridges and stoves..Those people will be reminded that it was the Politicians who keep food on their tables…Gimme one little vote nah?
That is a very blinkered view. The condos and hotels that the stay over tourists stay at could perfectly easily be owned by Caymanians. There are many Caymanians (including Mr. Dart and Mr. Berksoy) who could purchase any of the properties stay over tourists stay at.
One must also not forget who built the bulk of these properties and the employment those projects gave Caymanians and the business opportunities given to a wide range of Caymanian owned businesses engaged in construction. Any foreign contractor allowed in was permitted by CIG.
Also keep in mind the many locally owned businesses that service the condos and hotels the stay over tourists stay at and that at quieter times the stay over visitors also book trips on North Sound.
Caymanians are fortunate that they do not have to fill the menial roles in hotels and landscaping companies and can leave those jobs to people prepared to leave their families on the other side of the world, live in shocking conditions and work for just enough to make it worthwhile.
It is a gross misrepresentation to say stay over tourism is a massive failure. If one looks at he make up of those primarily engaged in the cruise oriented businesses there may well not be that great a difference – of course, absent from the “cruise model” is the huge investment that the infrastructure that supports stay over tourism has contributed locally (and continues to contribute).
Remember, every time a rental pool condo unit owned by a foreigner is sold, 71/2% of the purchase price is paid to CIG. That would be about $57,000 for the average unit on Seven Mile Beach and all those units provide 6% of rental revenue by way of Tourist Accom tax to CIG.
Without the stay over tourists there really is no need for work being done at the airport -unless CIG has in mind flying in thousands of day trippers to swarm the areas presently unaffected by cruise shippers and have armadas of snorkel trips and stingray fattening tours leaving from George Town.
Massive deception; just what CIG with the port project.
In order to have a policy work for locals, perhaps it is best to look at what other Caribbean Islands have done with their own tourism product. I can speak to what happens in Jamaica. In Jamaica, the hospitality industry is an industry that benefits the whole Island. It is where US$ is earned for the country and it is where many people educate their children, build homes for themselves and have life long careers. In Jamaica there is a school that teaches and trains persons who have an interest in that industry. From the lowly groundstaff, to the executive chef, there are various opportunities for Jamaicans to excel in that field.
This does not happen in the Cayman Islands. There is no one who is going to tell their child that working in hospitality is a fantastic career path. Part of the reason for this is that the local tourist association has not branded Cayman. What is Brand Cayman? What are we selling to visitors? Perhaps if the tourism association comes up with a campaign that showcases Brand Cayman, maybe then Caymanians will look at the hospitality industry as a way for them to showcase these beautiful Islands. It has to start with policy and the Government has to own this.
As a local person whenever I visit other Islands in the Caribbean I am always impressed by the fact that my first point of contact is with the local population. From going to carnival in Trinidad, crop over in Barbados, jazz festival in St. Lucia and Reggae Sumfest in Jamaica, at every turn from the moment I set foot in the airport, to the taxi, to the bar, to the club, I am greeted by the lilting accents of the various countries that I have visited. It brings a certain charm to my tourist experience when I can speak with locals and find out where they hang out so that I too can go and eat and drink locally as it is not the hotels that provide that experience that tourists crave. It is the locals who work in the hotels that provide the experience.
Perhaps what the hoteliers need to do is to work alongside the Government to come up with an action plan that will get more locals interested in the hospitality industry.
Our product is different. Hotels are staffed by permit holders because they received their training on-the-job at other hotels in the same company around the world. A Caymanian who wants to be night manager at a hotel has to start working front desk and will be sent overseas within the first couple of years to learn from the pros in big cities and so forth. Not even a local hospitality school will do the trick, unless it’s going to train locals to do the low-to-mid end jobs like server, supervisor, and so on. Concierge, guest services, management, etc. are off limits to anyone, not just Caymanians, without the temperament and training in guest expectations and the ability to perform the emotional labour required to meet them those expectations. I try to imagine some people I know properly dealing with a complaint in a way that ensures the guest returns and it’s a horrifyingly laughable prospect.
BS.
You mean to tell me, the locals in all the other Caribbean islands with nice hotels (most of whom can’t even get a US or UK travel visa) get sent off to get management training in other jurisdictions?
That’s right and pigs fly.
The fact their passports aren’t worth what ours are, because they chose to become independent, is not the point at all. Pigs don’t fly. But agreeable, conscientious people (those are two of the Big Five personality traits, if you aren’t familiar with them), who are also intelligent, are good fits for hotel management and positions that essentially represent the the brand and the property. They don’t talk back, they try to problem solve, and they actually care. They get hired into management training programmes (which do personality testing, by the way), and after a brief stint doing a job they will have to oversee/manage the execution of, yes, they are sent to other properties within the same company to learn more. This is a fact, it just happens to be one you apparently don’t know.
Or maybe Caymanians as a whole are not the kind of people anyone wants to have anything to do with? Could it be that simple? People like caring, respectable, helpful and happy persons. Not rude, self absorbed, disrespectful, lazy, and criminally minded. How can you change this? Calling me more disrespectful than you just proves my point. How would you change that? Training? Better schools? (meaning not government funded) Sending your kids off island to live for a while? Any ideas?
A gaslighting stereotype of your host country. Clearly you have the perfect mindset for a job in hospitality.
Kmanlady
US$6.00 per hour will not attrach the Caymanian population to work in the Tourism Industry again.
We made more than that back in the 1980 &1990.
Stop these hotel/condo owener from raping the island and its people.
But Kmanlady, it is your Caymanian people who set the minimum wage at $6.00 per hour NOT / NOT the expats.
Raise the damn minimum wage Caymanians in power.
No. But recognise that most jobs should be paid above the minimum wage.
(Lets leave aside that the Min. Wage for Hospitality is different because they expect Tips to make up the difference the employer doesn’t want to pay)
Servers in the states do not make more than that and depend on tips. That is the industry. People I know in the field make more than my salary a year and I have a professional job and a masterās degree. You have to work (and not complain) to make $$$ in the tourist industry field. Be on time, work, be polite and hospitable and you can do well. On a side note, been coming to GC for two decades and it would be extremely nice to see more Caymanians in the hotels, restaurants and bars. The ones whom I have met thru the years, we have become long time friends and I look forward to seeing them each visit.
Maybe other Caribbean islands don’t have the office jobs in the civil service or financial services that we have? If tourism is the major employer, and the alternative is unemployment, grinding poverty or a back breaking job in agriculture, perspectives would be different. But with the financial services money cow not only generating huge numbers of office jobs but paying for a civil service way larger than the size of the population needs, why on earth would a Caymanian kid aspire to the hard graft for less money? Hey, I could volunteer for a 60 hr week at minimum wage learning the ropes at a hotel, or I can walk into a civil service 9 to 5 job with gold plated medical and pension. Hmm – that’s a tough one.
Alden needs to stop bitching about how some elements of the private sector don’t generate jobs for Caymanians that they don’t actually want anyway, and focus on the revenues that they generate that allow him to maintain civil service jobs and and government expenditure that provides services for those self same Caymanians (including, dare I say, Alden McLaughlin, who abandoned the legal profession a long, long time ago).
Why does he always need to diss anything the DoE or NCC says? I don’t know where he developed his massive grudge against the environment. Too much time spent with “Mangrove Soup” McKeeva?
Anyone with any sense and foresight should have given this business model the SWAT test. Alden like his predecessors are only looking at the money rolling in to the CIG slush fund from work permits and have done little or nothing to make this sector more resilient.
Now just watch the Civil Service swell itās ranks with unqualified, unprepared out of work tourism workers. Also expect the formation of other new redundant CIG entities like OfReg. Streamlining of the Civil Service is now a long dead pipe dream.
Hereās some ideas, why not create district environmental initiatives such as community recycling & processing depots. Start tree planting programmes. Train some to work with green technologies. These are all areas where Caymanians should be proud to be a part of, it will pay dividends in Caymanās future.
The problem is that monopolistic operations are allowed to set miserly wages across the entire 7 mile area…
CNS: The rest of this comment has been posted here.
when a government uses work permits as a revenue source then you will have far more expats being employed…….
Your so right Premier, just get the port project going along with your investment partner communist china and everything will be ok.
Dumb comment.
The China reference is a bit off – but how exactly does Alden square his saying cruise ship tourism is essential to Cayman but stay over tourism is a massive failure? Are the cruise ship tourists getting on different Stingray city boats or attending different local attractions to the stay over tourists?
No the China reference is not off. China works through its Communist Party State Corporations in very quiet and effective ways in the Caribbean.
Someone is woke. Glad some people have taken an interest in the shenanigans of the CCP.
Agreed. And obvious in some countries. But here? Now? Your evidence? Because I dont see the Chinese infrastructure projects underway, staffed by Chinese workers, based on Chinese soft lending. I also dont see many Chinese. I do however see Alden and Moses in bed with Carnival, who last time I looked were not remotely Chinese. If you were talking about our former Premier and his track record of acting as a Chinese state entity lobbyist, yo may have a point.
“But he said it was not a simple case of just giving the jobs to Caymanians as they had to be able to do the work or want to do the work in the first place.”
Can you blame the industry for Caymanians not wanting to work in the industry? The industry is full of low-skilled, entry level jobs that pay relatively well. I did one. Everyone I know in the industry has started as a bellman, a server, a dishwasher, a housekeeper, etc. That’s the way it is. You don’t start as a supervisor, manager, director, or GM. In what industry would you?
Seems like he is arguing out of both sides of his mouth. There’s a need for the jobs yet there is no desire to take the jobs? Which is it? Because it can’t be both.
If he wants to point a finger and blame tourism to hide his own ineptitude at building and economy and raising up the population, then that’s fine. If he wants real change, then do something proactive.
Why is there not a pool of people needing jobs from which hotels can draw? As it stands, a hotel lists an opening for a couple weeks, after which it can hire off island. Reform that. If you want locals to have first crack, legitimately make hotels give locals the first crack. That’s a huge loophole.
The entry level jobs are a reality. Why not mandate the hotels on island to participate in and contribute to a certification and OJT program? One that creates a pathway to leadership roles. After a year of quality work within your role, you are eligible to participate and see to your own advancement.
Speaking of seeing to your own advancement, all Marriott-brand hotel employees can currently take advantage of online trainings for free. Marriott has a comprehensive database of lessons that teach skills for all disciplines. Since 3 of the 4 major hotels on SMB are Marriott, there is opportunity for a majority of hotel employees TODAY. No computer at home? Every hotel has training rooms where computers are available.
Umm, the immigration law has always mandated appropriate training programs. It has been inconsistently applied.
You can mandate training but you can’t mandate employment of the trainee.
Actually, you can – and they do. Training programs are meant to be part of the requirements for companies above a certain size getting permits – along with succession planning. What you cant get is any guarantee that a training position provided will be taken up by Caymanians, and if you have zero enforcement on making sure that there even is a training plan or that it isn’t designed not to work, then you have a problem. 10:10 am is spot on. My business has run a training program for 12 years, and not once in that time has anyone from Immigration ever come to speak to the trainees, or even asked us about how many take up the program or stay with it. Not once. Government is really good at imposing rules and regulations, and even better at completely ignoring their enforcement.
Anyone know which Caymanians participate in the ownership of all of these hotels, and their restaurants, and bars, and related operations?
Dart is Caymanian.
OK, so Dart, Dart, and Dart share in the profits. That makes 3 Caymanians. Any others?
The ones that sold them to foreign investors
Every teenager should be working at a hotel or grocery store to earn some spending money, learn responsibility and work ethic, get some training and job experience and to stay out of trouble.
One of the dumbest pieces I’ve ever read. The premier has answered his own concerns:
1. ‘the wages paid to those working in overnight tourism were so low that most Caymanians wonāt do those jobs.’
Answer: Change the law and force employers to pay a decent wage, which benefits everyone in the industry, and you’ll maybe find Caymanians will take a job in tourism.
2. ‘not a simple case of just giving the jobs to Caymanians as they had to be able to do the work or want to do the work in the first place.’
There are many jobs in tourism but the vast majority involve serving customers food and drink. That isn’t rocket science. Opening a bottle of beer or carrying food to people doesn’t require you to be an intellectual colossus (and yes I have done it albeit on a different island a long time ago). A pleasant manner and willingness to provide good customer service is arguably more important.
The simple fact is is that there isn’t enough status being a humble server for SOME Caymanians. People who want to work will work and people who want to learn will learn. Simple concept. It’s maybe time to kick some of your own people up the backside and tell them that they will never have a better opportunity than now to get into the tourism industry and help provide the ‘Caymanian Experience’ that is so desired. Provide the direction and get business owners by the scruff of the neck and get changes made to help YOUR people. Or don’t and just carry on whining about it.
“One of the dumbest pieces Iāve ever read”..true that..something you would expect to find in crayon on a seat in the short bus.
The premier has finally revealed his cards on the border closure. First, I must be clear in that the border did need to be closed for covid, but I have been quite intrigued by the Premier’s position on reopening. Very early on he stated that the borders would not be opened this year, then very unlikely at Sept. 1. It was always pause for thought on why he would be so definitive so early in the pandemic, especially as we have seen things can change rapidly. His statements in this article show light on his rational for the definitive statements on prolonged closure, he wants change to the tourism industry. Keeping the industry closed for a prolonged period of time allows a reset to be performed presumably along the lines of what he wants Cayman tourism to look like. The current practice of tourism in Cayman certainly needs some reevaluation, but it is concerning that the Premier appears to have a plan in his mind without being fully transparent with the public. To this extent I would carefully scrutinize the Premier’s post office economic status next year. I suspect we will see some benefits to the premier due to his role in the decimation of the tourism industry.
It is interesting he claims tourism to be a failure for Caymanians with a low local employment rate. As I recall it is his duty and responsibility for the government to make the rules and laws for the best interest of the country. Thus the “failure” of tourism is really his failure, but I do not think we will see the Premier acknowledge that any time soon. I encourage the Premier and government to take this time to make changes that will improve the economic status of Caymanians.
šššššššš
Yeah John Smith, bring in all those coronavirus cases from Florida, the new world centre for the coronavirus. Record new cases there every day and hospitals being filled in Florida by the hour.
Wake up John Smith and smell the air in Floriduh.
Fake.
It MAY become the US epicenter but remember the more you test the more you find.
I will go out side now and smell the Florida air and Iām sure I will
be fine!
80% of all ICU beds taken in Florida as of today. A disaster waiting to happen in Florida. You really want to open the borders to Florida?
Think John.
You seem to be suggesting that this is part of a master plan to allow those with deep pockets and a longer term agenda to acquire assets at a cheap price. Of course there are other alternatives, such as Alden either not understanding the economic benefits of stay over tourism irrespective of whether it directly employs any Caymanians, pandering to a certain anti expat sentiment, or simply attempting to defuse criticism over the border closure (whatever your view on how necessary it was) by saying the pain is being absorbed by foreigners.
Please leave the jobs of opening beer and carrying food to people to the Canadians. Such good service from them.
Alden, you never seem to amaze me..What a slap in the face but actually proves what his and Moses agenda has been all along..
Alden you have the brain of a fruit fly.
I wonder how many Caymanians enjoy the short term rental fees they receive from stay over tourists? I suspect it may be a little more than that $10 they get for a t-shirt or the $3 they get for lemonade sold on the curb – that’s for sure!
*fingers crossed Panton is prepared for the next election and wipes the PPM/UDP off the floor*
Cayman needs new blood at the top.
Cayman doesn’t want to elect smart people anymore; only blowhard nationalists who pander to the uneducated electorate with empty promises and anti-expat rhetoric. Wayne isn’t that type. You can thank the vote to single-member constituencies for this sorry state of affairs. I hate to tell you, but the caliber of the current legislative crew is what we’re going to get until there are enough new Caymanians who can vote and not be swayed by a new fridge, a paved driveway, a $25 backhander or promises of get-rich-quick opportunities with little work or investment involved in the next, great administration.
yes but most of those people have been pushed into a few areas. Take a look at the electoral map and start thinking about why it drawn the way it is.
So like the leaders of US and UK?
Bang on 9:30. New blood needed ASAP on top. Please run Wayne Panton.
Wow this guy will say anything that suits the moment…he’s kind of a less orange version of Trump. Maybe some idiot shouldn’t have been so liberal with the work permits in the financial services or PR. Can’t get those jobs back.
Donanlden.
Trump will get re elected simply because lib policy has not worked. discuss policy first no matter who it is so you can stop with the bad orange man regurgitation of everything CNN.
You should write code.
A true hard core Trump supporter. Cannot read, write, spell or construct a proper sentence. Just like the stable genius.
Cayman is perfectly suited for a world-class hospitality school. Educate local people in the business, and also charge non-Caymanian students high fees. Our wonderful hotels and restaurants would be able to offer internships and other training opportunities, and then directly employ local graduates. Far from being low-paid manual labor employment, the jobs available in the hotel industry include everything from accounting, marketing, event planning, human resources, restaurant management, and so on.
Why would Caymanians work in tourism when they can make twice the money for half the work in financial services?
or twice the money and no health and pension cost at 1/4 of the work in civil service.
Alden is a grossly incompetent moron.
And a perfect representation of Cayman culture.
Only if you take what he says at face value, or think that he actually believes it. Anyone who can navigate Cayman politics for as long as he has and secure 2 terms as Premier is not stupid. Dont confuse success as a politician with statesmanship, or public statements with real belief.
McLaughlin said he had recently asked a leading operator in the tourism sector how do we get local people to work in the industry, saying that was the big challenge and the big question. But he said it was not a simple case of just giving the jobs to Caymanians as they had to be able to do the work or want to do the work in the first place.
At last Mr Premier is in the streets asking the right people. Itās been said many tines before, – the underlying truth is unreliability and entitlement culture. Whilst not amiable in any industry the tourism & watersports industry is more susceptibility by way of earning their revenue in waves. The last thing they need is workers coming in late, not showing up for work at all, or leaving without notice during peak season periods compromising the ability to earn through having to cancel tours and reschedule on-Island guests, and compromising services. If youāre partnered with the cruise industry and this happens more than a few times an operator will lose their contract pretty quick. Mr Premier, the above are your fundamental underlying problems, everything else is for the most part workable.
Well I am glad that after being Premier for so long he finally got around to asking industry! Of course its just a rhetorical device – that way he can ascribe the answer to someone else rather than his personal belief, and his failure to act previously to a lack of understanding. Do you honestly think the man didn’t understand the problems of entitlement during the 20 years he has been a politician? Or until recently had never had a conversation about the lack of Caymanian employment in tourism?
Perhaps what you are seeing is that as he faces the end of his last term as Premier he is prepared to say things he was formerly too careful to say – like Caymanians may not actually want the hospitality jobs being held by Filipinos, Jamaicans and Canadians.
Can’t believe he is on the cruise tourism crap again.. Stay over visitors were the ones that built our tourism product and we better find more ways of getting them because cruise tourism in my opinion is dead. Who the hell wants to go on a cruise ship now with their reputation.
Thank God the Premier and Deputy Premier didn’t get their way with the cruise pier. Imagine the mess we would be in now if that had started and had to be left abandoned for 3-4 months..God has blessed us from at least some of the bad decisions of these Politicians..
Thank you CPR
The waterfront has never looked more clean in the 30 years of my life including, the air is more unpolluted and fresh. The water is looking more crystal clear than ever and it’s all because there hasn’t been any floating garbage bins(cruise ships) to pollute the area.
and yet 3,000 Caymanians are unemployed and their families are hungry. Hungry? like seriously need food. do you not get it? do you know what it is like not to be able to feed your children????
Plenty of alternative jobs for them, including some that can readily be created if government wanted. Must be better than paying them to stay home and do nothing.
Do you know what it’s like to explain to your children why our marine life is going extinct and the environment is becoming less habitable?
A hell of a lot easier than explaining why there is no food! Talk about privilege!
You can’t think short term. If I was out of work, you bet my ass I would be slinging burgers or cleaning toilets. YOU HAVE to do what you have to do.
When we have to go back to relying on the ocean for food what are you going to tell your kids?
Sorry Jr, I didn’t know the environment was so important. Hell who knew we had to co-exist with it to survive?
Don’t be a simpleton.
Proving that environmental policy is useless. The earth does not need your help and is restorative in very short order no matter what man does! If anything we should spend some time cleaning up all the garbage thrown on the roads! It is beautification….not environmentalism and then work on the garbage dump!
Or maybe you just can’t afford to be drunk and high all day now.
I agree. Now is the time to remove the gaudy, cheap advertisements that adorn a number of the buildings in George Town……ice cold beer……two for one etc.
We can make Cayman a quality destination, different from all the others.
If I were a Caymanian who only graduated high school, would you rather work in the service industry and have to hustle for tips; or get a cushy civil service job that only requires 50% effort where I can just float to the top?
-Caymanian
Lot harder to float to the top in the civil service than you realize
This clearly demonstrates that Alden’s intellect is about as deep as puddle. He is too simple to understand the indirect benefit of stay over tourist’s spending at restaurants, car rentals, grocery stores, liquor stores,etc and more importantly all the companies that supply those businesses which do employ Caymanians. His term can’t end soon enough.
Those businesses tend not to employ Caymanians either. He is now confronted with the reality of a failed permits for all immigration policy, colliding head with a failed education system. A failed approach to minimum wage does not help either.
Exactly right. When I finish lunch at a nice restaurant serving food most Caymanians consider too ‘fru fru’ for them and go to Cayman Distributors to buy the sparkling water that the restaurant serves, it’s a Caymanian taking my order. The restaurant wouldn’t exist without the tourists so the restaurant staff wouldn’t be spending in Caymanian-owned businesses making the Kirkconnells, Fosters, Merrens etc. richer every day. The distributor wouldn’t need two Caymanians to process walk-in purchases. Locals wouldn’t have the sophisticated palates that they can acquire without having to travel without those restaurants, and so we wouldn’t have Taste of Cayman as big and bad as it is now, attracting thousands to try all sorts of things. If we didn’t have 200+ restaurants on Grand Cayman alone and they weren’t mobbed by tourists during the season (which government has done a good job of expanding to 3/4 of the year), they wouldn’t have been able to do the great job they did of keeping us fed during lockdown. Just go to Ragazzi in January – 75% tourists minimum, full house night after night, multiple table turns. Alden must be one of these people who only eats out when he is forced and turns his nose up at most of the menu and wants to go back to his farm. Lunch with a former senior politician in London was interesting; I knew what I was ordering but he had to ask the server a half-dozen questions before sending her away to come back when he had deciphered the strange language on the menu. Dinosaurs eating leaves…
The truth is the industry benefits us all directly and indirectly in tangible and intangible, countable and uncountable ways. Get rid of stay over tourism and you get rid of everything we brag about in our marketing efforts. We’d have no business putting ads in Food & Wine Magazine anymore. Cayman Cookout wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t have a reputation as a destination that makes cruise tourists demand cruise companies stop here.
AND I have several young Caymanian friends in tourism, some even in sustainable tourism. A lot of them are first-generation Caymanians if you like but I grew up with them and the soles of their feet are as hard as mine. One friend is part of a major hotel’s management training program; he’ll be posted around the world in all likelihood and eventually be sent back here to manage the relevant hotel because he’s talented enough and has the right temperament to rise fast.
We aimed our stayover product at high end people which means a lot of low end jobs to cater to the standards they expect. Caymanians don’t want to work those because of low pay, unsociable hours, statutory minimum benefits, exploitative and harsh management techniques, colleagues that have nothing in common with them culturally, etc. Similarly most Caymanians do not have the temperament and are not capable of acquiring the refinement that would allow them to serve in higher level positions, actually interacting with the guests. The difference tends to be whether they got any overseas education whatsoever or at least come from a good family that took overseas holidays beyond Florida. If they didn’t, then yeah all they can do is be part of the taxi cartel fed by the cruise cartel; they can only do a job with poor quality control, nowhere to complain effectively for customers, and artificially inflated prices.
There is a mismatch between stayover tourism and most Caymanians but it is the result of deliberate policy choices like, as McKeeva said, ‘we must embrace wealth or reap poverty’. How is that working out? Oh and run the math on the stayover tax for me and how many Caymanian civil servants that pays for. Run the math on the contribution of rooms, cottages, bed and breakfasts, Airbnb type offerings to the pockets of local property owners and where they spend that money.
If he wants Caymanians in hospitality, we need a hospitality school designed to maximise our product by training our own people in what it is and how to do it. Or they need to get really smart and start asking schools to identify students with the temperament to work in that industry and offer them scholarships. So many ways this industry contributes to our well-being, financial and otherwise, and so many untapped opportunities. But that’s all complicated; much easier to try to feed the gaping maws of the taxi drivers and their umpteen children, nieces and nephews, ‘nieces and nephews because they call their family friends uncle and aunt’ riding shotgun, etc. Much easier.
Idiot.
I wonder if it would an idea to have the retired tourism people who made Cayman Tourism Industry what it was back then (not now) and start with bring them back in to the tourism to maybe start off with ie… tour bus operators to come in and mandate the new local tour bus operators and teach them what they need to do to give the tourism industry and taste of what Cayman tourism use to be.
We can also try with the retired tourism house keepers who can teach the new generation on how to keep the rooms in great standards and how to enter act with the tourism visitors.
As for front desk people I am sure that the younger school leavers or even on during school work program as they do in some of governments departments. I am sure that there are some young people who would be interested in mechanical or even cleaning pools.
As for the restaurants we really had some great retired people who really show what the Caymanian Hospitality was all about.
Thank you
Ok. I tried to help a well bodied Caymanian male from West Bay. His passport expired 11 years ago. He has no bank account. No drivers licence. He is well educated. He is not a coke head. Drinks all day.
His daily day is sending me Whatsapp messages asking me for $2.00 $.75 cents $1.00. Real bum.
If I ask him to clean my car or any for that matter he always has an excuse as to why he cant do the work. I flipped and ran his no good rump from my property. I said to him “rather than run around west bay all day begging and bumming why dont you go look a job in construction?” Bumbo why I say that for! He cuss me out bout he not working for nobody he a Caymanian bla bla bla.
You get my point.
you have those in every country of the world…… so no I don’t get your point !
I won’t speak to the OP’s point but I’ll make my own: a problem found around the world is magnified in a small place, and ends up being decisive of an outcome, as opposed to being just a factor as it would be in a big place with much more room to manipulate the situation in the direction of improvement.
This behaviour is learnt from a failed system and handouts by elected officials. It is not reflective of #Caymankind culture which has not been given the importance it deserves. Sometimes we really do feel like the Red Indians!
Yes. Bumbo was a potential giveaway. Ever suspect he may not even be a Caymanian?
Generalize much?? You just provided us with another example as to why we are marginalized…
All black people are poor
All rich people are white
All Caymanians are lazy
All Expats are not lazy
Do you see where I am going with this?
At what point was colour even brought into the original poster’s comment?
The Premier is of course right. What he dare not also say is that of the purported 30% Caymanians said to be employed in the industry, the great majority are recent status recipients under the rags to status policies created by Mac and then adopted by successive governments since, sometimes at considerable variance with the letter of applicable laws.
Not a single further hotel should receive planning permission until all existing hotels have at least 50% Caymanian employment, at all levels.
I like the teeth of that, but he failed to quantify the actual need on the island. How many able-bodied Caymanians are unemployed or underemployed? A law based on an arbitrary number of 50% doesn’t make sense.
See my point above. If you want a hotel job, you should register. That registry should be the required first stop for employers.
Working at a hotel is considered servitude and scorned by Caymanians. Other Caymanians will talk behind your back if you take a job in a hotel – unless it’s the GM position.
They will not work there because there is no money to be made when people from destitute countries come here to work for $4 an hour and live 10 to a room.
Why you dont just say the Philipinos and done. What you afraid of?
Aldart I stopped reading your comment at “The Premier is of course right.”