Tom Stieghorst
That cruises are a lifeline to Caribbean economies was brought home to me by the news of Puerto Rico's bankruptcy as well as my recent visit to Cuba aboard the Norwegian Sky, on Norwegian Cruise Line's first call in Cuba in 50 years.
Both freed from Spain by the Spanish-American war, Cuba and Puerto Rico have taken different economic paths. But like every sizeable country in the Caribbean, their economies were founded on the 17th century formula of sugar and slaves.
That hasn't been a viable formula for a long time.
But the illusion that sugar could be a pillar of the economy persisted into the 1970s, as shown by Cuba's disastrous quest to harvest 10 million tons of cane in 1970. It hasn't helped that Cuba has been cut off from one of its biggest natural trading partners, the United States, by a trade embargo for 50 years.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico leveraged its status as an associated territory of the U.S. to host branch manufacturing plants from the mainland, particularly in pharmaceuticals. But Congress let the Section 926 tax incentives that attracted those plants to lapse in 2006.
Since then, Puerto Rico has joined its neighbors Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica in exporting to the U.S. one of its most valuable assets - talented and intrepid people. The closure of the sizeable Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in 2004 didn't help the commonwealth's economy either.
As valuable as they were, the tax credits and the navy base are probably not coming back. It's time for Puerto Rico and Cuba to move forward and use what resources they have to build a 21st century economy.
A key pillar of those economies can be tourism, especially cruise tourism. The countries of the region already have an effective economic development organization in the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association.
Countries that have made a focused effort to lure more cruise ships are finding it is possible. Martinique, for example, expects some 400,000 cruise passengers in 2017-18, a tenfold increase from only seven years ago.
Puerto Rico needs to press its advantage as the gateway to the southern Caribbean and a place where U.S.-based cruise lines can comfortably homeport ships and offer a closed-loop cruise that doesn't require U.S. citizens to have a passport.
Cuba has an even greater opportunity to build cruise tourism from almost nothing now by exploiting this historical moment and improving its infrastructure so that larger ships can dock, if not in Havana, then somewhere close by.
A Norwegian Cruise Line spokeswoman said every guest on the 2,004 passenger Norwegian Sky got off the ship at some point in the ship's two-day stay in Havana. If they were anything like me, they emptied their wallets, buying rum, musical recordings, souvenirs, and tipping bands, tour guides and drivers. Many ate in restaurants, purchased shore excursions or bought admission to museums.
It's a source of hard currency that the Cuban economy can't do without. Throughout the Caribbean, the 21st century may be the era not of sugar cane or pharmaceutical manufacturing, but of cruise tourism.