Sitting quietly on the side of the sandy roadway that criss-crosses Roatan's cultural West End, a local I recognize as a water taxi operator tells me he's going to be able to buy his own boat after the new year. "They come lots of gringos this year, mon!.... them big ship comin and we ready for em", he says with a grin on his face that you can tell he's waited for a long time for.
Yes, the locals are getting ready for a tourist explosion that this Island has never seen before. Hundreds of tour operators, bus drivers, business owners and street peddlers are believing that this is the year Roatan is officially put on the map!
Carnival Cruise Lines, with their reportedly $52 million, state of the art, brand new ship terminal will host their first mega-cruiser later this fall. Their dock facilities are boasted to be able to service 2-3 ships on the same day! Combine that with Royal Caribbean's new facility, opened last season, and we've got the capabilities to handle 4-5 ships at once! That's up to 15,000 passengers a day! And where do all these vacationers like to hang out? One place for sure is the water! And there's no better place than the whites sands of West Bay Beach! Snorkeling, diving, kayaking, water skiing, parasailing and even a new floating bar are all part of the attractions offered on Roatan's west side.
Good thing there are plenty of things to do on Roatan and the list is growing thanks to Pristine Bay Resort's Black Pearl Golf Club--an 18 hole Pete Dye championship golf course slated to open December this year! Oh, and the new Mega Plaza for those who want to enjoy duty free shopping is opening stores almost daily with Wendys, Applebysand a host of other shops and services catering to locals and tourists alike already serving customers.
Hotels are saying bookings are down this year, yet they have no doubts about the up and coming busy season. "I would say close to 30% of our rooms are filled with cruise shippers who've come back to spend a week on the Island", says Louis St. Louis, from Bananarama Dive Resort. "We'll be fully booked up for Christmas very soon," he adds. This optimism is shared by many of Roatan's resort owners.
After a slow start to the year and an unstable political environment thanks to some bad press and the absurd political behavior of the USA to boot... Roatan is ready for change... and judging by the flurry of activity at the customs agencies... almost ready for our ship to come in.
