Mr. Guerrero says the immigration process in the USVI and VI allows little time for tourists visiting Dolphin Discovery to shop in Tortola.

Dolphin Discovery usually attracts a number of tourists from St. Thomas, however, he said the tourists hardly have time to walk around to do any shopping since their time is cut short by the immigration processes here and in St. Thomas.

“It would be great if we can extend the time here on the island to give the capacity of people the chance to do some shopping and leave some income but counting the time it takes to clear immigration here and in St. Thomas and the one hour ferry ride to Tortola at the moment basically leaves little time for the tourists to do anything else. We don’t want to bend the law, we don’t want to do anything wrong but it would be great instead of it being one hour 45 minutes or one hour 15 minutes in the line waiting to be cleared one by one at immigration. In that way the tourists could spend some more time here and that could be more business for other people such as restaurants and gift shops. I am sure persons don’t have a problem with having a hundred or so tourists walking around their stores,” Mr. Guerrero said.

Tourists down

Meanwhile, the Dolphin Discovery manager said the programme does not attract so much tourists as it used to, but they have been doing various promotions to attract not only tourists but persons living on the island as well.

General Manager of Dolphin Discovery-Tortola, Carlos Guerrero. Photo: VINO

“In the past the season was not so low as it is now because some ships stayed on the Summer, the carnival cruise ships used to have one scheduled for every eight days, NCL kept ships in the Caribbean so we had a couple of NCL calls and a couple of Princess’ but eventually those started to decrease till now where we have just one cruise ship a month for carnival and that’s it.

“For the 2010/2011 the season we had 27 percent less call than last season so I think that is a red flag. We try to compensate with discount rates- 15 percent down in 2009, 20 percent in 2010 and 27 percent for 2011. The business that we don’t get here we try to get it from St. Thomas, that means what we have been doing for the past five years was getting the tourists that are arriving over there to tour her,” he disclosed.

Meanwhile, Mr. Guerrero had previously told Virgin Islands News Online that the entity would like to attract more local trainers and that the opportunity is always open for them. “We don’t mind the people here being hired and trained over here but it is not that easy because we can put an ad in the paper and we don’t have anybody coming for it…When they do come they don’t show so much excitement to be going in the water. Some of them are afraid of swimming which is unfortunate for us living on an island and surrounded by water. I think that (swimming) is something that should be mandatory.”

The General Manager had said, however, that he noticed the confidence level building in children after being given the opportunity year after year to experience the programme due to the packages it offers to schools, organisations and groups such as the Kids And The Sea (KATS) programme.