The Carnival Triumph cruise ship with almost three thousand guests has cancelled a call on Belize tomorrow - reportedly because satisfactory tender arrangements cannot be worked out.
That's after some upheaval in the local tenders association which saw former point man Stanley Longsworth resign on Friday.
Today we received a release saying that Jason Marin is the new designate for the association.
That group issued a lengthy release today explaining that what Longsworth called the moving of the goalposts continues - despite an intervention by the Prime Minister late last week. The PM had gotten confirmation from senior Carnival Executives that the arrangement with the local tenders would stand until October 21st.
But according to the association, on Friday January 14th, they were told that only vessels with passenger capacity of 150 and more will be required to service Carnival ships that arrive this week. the Tendering needs requests are unclear and consistently changing. That later increased to tenders with a capacity of 200 passengers.
Today's release, says, quote:
"The Association continues to be misled….by the continuous changing and adjusting of requests for the Tendering needs, making the Association have doubts about Carnival's intentions to have a working relationship with the local boat operators."
In fact the release goes a step further, it says that the local operators are, quote "being deliberately railroaded" to ensure that a deal between them and carnival will not be attainable.
They add that they are unclear as to "who is making the calls on behalf of Carnival and what their exact needs are."
To try and find a way forward, meetings were held this morning with the Tourism Board and the Ministry of Tourism and there are reports that a delegation will be travelling to Miami on Friday to speak directly with Carnival executives.
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