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For an island as small as Honduras’ Roatán (35 miles in length, four or five in width), it receives an impressive number of nonstop weekly flights from the United States—nine, with four gateways, Houston, Atlanta, Miami and Newark, NJ, and three carriers, Continental, Delta and TACA. All these flights arrive at the weekend, and most are relatively recent developments. This lift can potentially result in 1,500 or so tourists arriving here weekly, at the small but recently improved Roatán International Airport, also known as Juan Manuel Gálvez (Durón), after a former Honduran president who in 1949 ended 16 years of dictatorship in this nation.
These 1,500 tourists are not enough to be responsible for any new pressure felt on this beautiful island, which - together with the more laidback Útila (Whale shark-watching and a hippie vibe) and Guanaja (difficult to reach and a real off-the-beaten-path destination) - constitute Honduras’ tourism treasure, the Bay Islands in the Caribbean Sea. (Perhaps the Mayan ruins of Copán might argue with this statement.) There are sufficient hotel rooms, including the Infinity Bay Spa & Beach Resort in West Bay, which opened in February on the best spot on the best beach on the island. No, the real pressure will come from the increasing number of cruise ships that now have made Roatán their hottest new port of call.
Both Royal Caribbean International and Carnival Cruise Line are expanding their Roatán cruise ports, in November 2008 and some time in 2010, respectively. Obviously, Royal Caribbean is further along in their plans. Tucked away in a worksite cabin-office in one corner of a chain-fenced lot (soon to house a restaurant, a bar and luggage facilities), the general manager of the Port of Roatán, Jairo Molina, told me that the first cruise ship to come to Roatán visited in only 1979. “Five years ago that number rose to 50 a year, and within two years it is likely to be 200.”
A casual calculation reveals that the number of passengers in these 200 ships will equal more or less 500,000 people - 500,000 tourists, nearly all of whom will stay for less than a day (this is calculated upon Carnival’s expanded terminal). “Most of these visitors will stay close to the terminal,” Molina added, “visiting nearby beaches.”
Royal Caribbean’s terminal is in the island’s principal town, Coxen Hole, while Carnival’s will be in neighboring Dixon Hole, five miles up the road.
“Most of the island remains undeveloped,” Honduras’ secretary of state for tourism, Ricardo Martinéz, said, “and we plan on it staying that way.” He is referring to the huge swaths of land up-island, east of Dixon Hole and stretching all the way to Port Royal, the only place left on Roatán where its fabled Yellow-naped parrots still fly in the wild. These areas also contain the Garífuna people, African-Caribbeans who were forced out of the Caribbean islands of St. Vincent & the Grenadines by the British colonizers in 1797. They came and made the dusty town of Punta Gorda, as well as other settlements such as Oak Ridge and Pollytilly Bight. The road here is narrow and full of potholes, although when I was there, I did see roadwork.
Molina suggested that on average each passenger spends $70 while on Roatán, but many traders in the tourist community of West End complain that they do not spend it with them. “They do ask to use our toilets, though,” Roland, a bar owner, complained to me.
“If every one of these cruise-ship guests fell in love with the island, which we hope they do, and bought property, then we would have a problem,” Martínez continued, “but that will not be the case.”
Others have a different opinion. “The most dangerous animal in our jungle is the Roatán property developer,” says Bill Brady, who with this wife Irma, owns and runs the beautiful Carambola Botanical Gardens, across the road from the entrance of the world-famous Anthony’s Key Resort in Sandy Bay. Brady, who came to Honduras as a Peace Corps volunteer “many, many years ago,” chuckles at this, but the concern on his face is evident.
And the developers are hard at work. With the increase in cruise passengers, the reign of the small, independent, occasionally island-owned guesthouse seems to be on the decline. There are already a few internationally owned resort properties, but so far branded hotel development has not reared its head. That is, until now.
InterContinental Hotels & Resorts has been sniffing around, albeit so far with no firm commitments, but that is not true of Starwood’s brand Westin, which is due to open the 164-room Westin Resort & Spa Roatán (it'll probably dispense with the accent over the last "a") in 2009. Details are few, but expect the usual mixture of village-style residence, hotel rooms and Oceanside cabanas and villas.
According to Lodging Econometrics, which tracks the entire hotel development pipeline globally, there are two hotels in the Roatán pipeline. And they’re both five-star luxury projects between 99 and 251 rooms.
“Nearly one-third of the Pipeline in Central America is made up of Luxury and Upper Upscale projects, with most located in the Caribbean island nations and the beachfront resort areas,” said Pat Ford, President of Lodging Econometrics.
Currently, there are approximately 1,500 three-, four- and five-star hotel rooms on Roatán; most places to stay remain small backpackers’ hostels and inns. Figures are sketchy as to how many new upscale rooms are coming to the island, but a conservative figure suggests another 1,500. That said, the real pressure on the island comes from second homes, and this could be increased by the increase in cruise passengers, who are more likely to want second homes than they are hotel rooms; it can easily be argued that their preferred “room” anywhere is a cabin. Honduran tourism authorities had no statistics on hotel-room development on Roatán, only for the entire county.
No golf course? No need to worry. Both Pete Dye and Gary Player have announced interest in building not just Roatán’s, but also Honduras’, first international-standard golf links. Dye’s will be part of the as-yet-not-underway Pristine Bay Resort, which has a Web presence but no timeline as of yet (2010 has been mentioned), while Player’s will be part of the Los Micos Beach & Golf Resort. While its developers are making all the right noises to potential investors, its proposed site on Tela Bay faces legal disputes from islanders, most notably the Garífuna, Afro-Caribbeans exiled to the island by the British from St. Vincent & the Grenadines, the Caribbean island nation, in 1797.
More along in terms of “crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s” (the company has released an official press release) is the Nikki Beach Resort & Spa Roatán, which will open at the end of 2010 and have more than 100 rooms, suites and villas, as well as a spa, a marina and an eco-park (the last two offerings now are de rigueur as far as new developments here are concerned). It will be part of the 90-acre Blue Ocean Reef, which will be bordered by 2,500 feet of beach and have a restaurant and amphitheater. Construction already has started; Nikki Beach currently has 14 properties around the world, with plans to open more in such destinations as Egypt and Costa Rica.
Another property under construction is the Parrot Tree Plantation which, like Blue Ocean Reef, is to the east of the island, in an area that Martínez seemed to hint was to be kept pristine under all costs. That might prove impossible to promise in the island’s new culture of tourism and low or nonexistent taxes.
One last project is a possible outpost of tony hotel company Raffles, which might be spearheaded by Honduran company El Grupo Midence Soto-Pierrefeu, headed by Thierry de Pierrefeu Midence, a former minister of tourism. However, if that development sees the light of day, it will be on the neighboring Bay Islands island of Guanaja, which remains very difficult to reach (your correspondent was willing, but getting there defeated him).
Some existing hotels here have shown foresight. Vernon Reid, one of the owners of the Infinity Bay Spa & Beach Resort, is an engineer and inventor. My ability to follow his excited conversation was limited, as he sketched, both with words and on paper, his ideas, plans, calculations and already existing handiwork, which included solar heating panels, septic systems, the ecologically sound tweaking of water tables and the collection of rain water to provide potable water throughout the resort, something that he terms “reverse osmosis water purification.”
West Bay appears to be a resort area that has it right. Colorful fish swims yards from shore, iguanas scurry along walls of dry coral, and the beach is cleaned daily by a small army of hotel workers. But a hot walk up and then down hill to Lighthouse Point, the farthest western point of the island, uncovers a wealth of second homes, some being built, many for sale.
West End, which has a more relaxed air - with scuba-diving outfitters (the islands’ biggest draw), tropical-style bars and a backpacker element - also has avoided the excesses of development, but then again, many of those 500,000 passengers have not yet arrived. When they do, the long-awaited commercial ferry route from Roatán to gorgeous Útila might also make more sense, which worries many. Today, to get from one to the other, travelers either have to pay a lot of money for helicopter service or go the far more economical route of a ferry to the Honduran mainland, at the chaotic city of La Ceiba, where they can either take another ferry or a plane. That all takes time.
There also seems to be conflict between the scuba-diving tourists and the cruise-ship tourists. This might be inevitable, considering that their reasons for being there are different.
And as for powering all of this development? Well, that falls, at least electrically, to the Roatán Electric Company, known as RECO. Power cuts are common, and as I write this, an Internet search shows that its Website is for sale. Independent electrical supply is a growing business here. Generators are large sellers.
Can everyone live together? Martínez was adamant that they can, but what it appears definitely needs to be done is to make sure a healthy percentage of any increased tourism revenue is pumped back in the island. Honduras is a poor country - those on Roatán being only slightly better off - but with the cruise-ship companies and real-estate agencies being in mainly American hands, there is the potential for griping. Port fees and tourism money helps, as does ecologically sound hotel development and management, but there is hope that the Honduran government and all of its partners act wisely and not allow this wonderful island to be a victim of its own success.
Lazing the very early morning away on West Bay’s beach, I saw a cruise ship pop up on the horizon. It slowly rounded the island, at the point where the island’s best hotels are, just as the sun was fully in view. Such timing might not be a coincidence, for it is the kind of planning that the operators of cruise ships are famous for. No wonder streams of passengers head straight back here an hour later when the ship docked at Coxen Hole.
A Chinese proverb states, “Beauty does not ensnare men; they ensnare themselves.” Let’s hope it doesn’t happen here.
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