ST. CROIX — St. Croix will welcome up to 4,000 passengers when Royal Caribbean’s MS Adventure of the Seas docks at the Ann E. Abramson pier in Frederiksted on Sunday, the Department of Tourism (D.O.T.) has announced.
The ship’s Sunday arrival follows Governor Kenneth Mapp’s announcement last week that St. Croix would become the staging ground for the territory’s recovery.
St. Croix escaped the worst of Hurricane Irma and despite initial power outages, is now ready to welcome visitors, as hotels and visitor attractions are up and running, Mrs. Nicholson-Doty said. She said awareness of St. Croix is critically important to D.O.T.’s sales and marketing teams, who have been strategically positioning St. Croix in the marketplace.
“St. Croix will lead our tourism positioning for the foreseeable future. We have already started to shift our marketing strategy to focus on St. Croix, while we rebuild St. Thomas and St. John,” Mrs. Nicholson-Doty said.
She added that the much-needed injection of economic activity from visitors to St. Croix, together with activity from relief workers and construction, will ultimately help St. Thomas and St. John rebound and recover sustainably.
“Tourism is an important industry for us in the U.S. Virgin Islands and we are depending on the resilience of tourism and of our people to revitalize our economy and support our residents across both districts,” the commissioner said.
During Mr. Mapp’s announcement last week, made during one of his post Hurricane Irma press briefings, the governor cautioned that the surge in traffic, and in turn dollars, on St. Croix would not last forever, stating that the unique circumstance that has led to St. Croix becoming so indelible a part of the recovery of the territory, serves as an opportunity for St. Croix to prove itself as a major player. St. Croix has for years asked for more tourism traffic, especially cruise ships.
“I do want to say St. Croix continues to expand in the process of being the center of recovery,” Mr. Mapp said. He later added, “I want to caution the folks on St. Croix and the business community, it’s going to be an opportunity to demonstrate that St. Croix can be a player in the industry. And it’s not going to be permanent, but it’s certainly going to be an opportunity simply because other destinations cannot house or receive guests. It’s going to be an opportunity for us as Crucians to demonstrate that we can host, we can entertain, we can secure, and we can give people a wonderful experience.”
Passengers on MS Adventure of the Seas will visit St. Croix from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Tags: hurricane irma, st croix, tourism, us virgin islands
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