The rise of the cruise industry in the Caribbean promises jobs, economic activity and new opportunities for the islands that receive millions of passengers each year. But behind the record numbers, questions are also growing about how much money actually remains in each country, what costs governments absorb, and how the pressure from ever-larger ships affects infrastructure, the environment, public resources and residents’ daily lives.
Through an investigation that takes a closer look at conditions across several Caribbean islands, this special series examines who benefits from cruise tourism in the region — and who bears its costs. The stories document how different Caribbean countries negotiate with a powerful global industry while facing congestion, public incentives, port privatization, pressure on essential services, economic dependence and citizens’ demands for a fairer and more sustainable tourism model.
“The Weight of Cruise Tourism” offers a regional look at an urgent question for the Caribbean: If cruise ships bring so many passengers and so many promises of prosperity, are the islands getting a fair deal?
The journalists who participated in the project are Freeman Rogers, of The BVI Beacon in the British Virgin Islands, and Luis Joel Méndez González, of the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo in Puerto Rico.
The project was edited and supervised by Noel Algarín, editor at the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo. This investigation was made possible thanks to support from the CPI’s Journalism Training Institute and the Metcalf Ocean Nexus Academy, created by Ocean Nexus and Metcalf Institute in collaboration with The Uproot Project.
Old San Juan’s Cruise Growth Tests How Much the Historic City Can Take
While the number of cruise passengers visiting Old San Juan rose 11% from 2015 to 2025, residents warn that the influx is straining public infrastructure and community life.
Old San Juan’s Cruise Growth Tests How Much the Historic City Can Take
Across from Old San Juan’s piers, taxi driver Carlos Vera Centeno waits for tourists who booked him in advance to disembark so he can take them on a tour or to a nearby beach. He has followed that routine for 18 years, but the time it takes him to pick up or drop off passengers at the port has doubled and, at times, tripled.
“This year, I had to raise [the price of] my services for cruise passengers because a trip that used to take me 20 or 25 minutes [now] can take me an hour just to drop [passengers] off because of the traffic,” Vera Centeno said.
Traffic congestion is only one consequence of the overcrowding in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico’s main cruise port. The crush of visitors is also putting pressure on the historic city’s infrastructure and fueling frustration among residents.
Without a coordinated plan to address basic-service infrastructure, manage traffic into and out of the San Juan Islet, or ease the strain these conditions place on residents of the Walled City, the Puerto Rico government continues to promote the cruise industry as an economic activity that should keep growing, residents and business owners interviewed by the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) said.
In August 2025, Gov. Jenniffer González Colón declared that “we want more” as Puerto Rico sought to become a homeport for additional cruise lines. Less than a year later, water tanker trucks can be seen parked along Old San Juan’s narrow cobblestone streets, supplying water to businesses and residents.
Water tanker trucks supply drinking water in Old San Juan.
Photo by Omaya Sosa Pascual | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
The tanker trucks provide temporary relief from low water pressure and service outages that affect other parts of the capital but occur more frequently on the San Juan Islet, according to residents. Vanessa Droz Martínez, a San Sebastián Street resident and member of the Asociación de Vecinos del Viejo San Juan, known as AVISAJ, said water pressure drops, particularly at higher elevations, when cruise ships are supplied with water. The Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (PRASA) told the CPI that supplying docked cruise ships does not adversely affect water service for Old San Juan residents.
Overcrowding has consequences beyond traffic congestion and declining water pressure. The CPI’s investigation found that the poorly regulated, government-subsidized industry is also straining Old San Juan’s inadequate sanitation infrastructure and fragile streets, contributing to disorder and generating noise and air pollution.
Disconnected from Residents
As on other Caribbean islands, one limitation associated with cruise tourism is that the economic activity it generates is concentrated largely around port areas. As a result, it does not translate into significant revenue for other parts of Puerto Rico, or even other areas of San Juan, while placing tremendous pressure on the host community because the influx of people exceeds the historic city’s capacity, sources interviewed by the CPI agreed.
“The Asociación de Vecinos del Viejo San Juan views with deep concern the governor’s recent announcements concerning port expansion and the intention to turn Puerto Rico into a cruise hub similar to Miami,” the association said in a written statement to the CPI. “We believe these proposals reflect an economic vision disconnected from the physical, historical, environmental and community realities of Old San Juan.”
“Old San Juan is a living, historic and extremely fragile city,” the association added.
Video by Brandon Cruz González | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
San Juan is the main entry point for cruise passengers in Puerto Rico. Ponce, on the southern coast, also receives cruise ships, although activity there is limited. The Puerto Rico Tourism Company announced that in 2027 Legend of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship, will make a stop at the Port of Ponce. The government also wants to encourage cruise arrivals in Mayagüez, on Puerto Rico’s western coast, and has expressed interest in developing port infrastructure in Toa Baja and Cataño as part of its plan to make Puerto Rico a regional cruise hub.
AVISAJ said residents feel a tourism model has been imposed on them without opportunities for public participation, public hearings or rigorous studies assessing whether the islet can withstand the scale of activity generated by cruise ship arrivals.
Joel Pizá Batiz, former director of San Juan’s Department of Economic Development and Tourism, acknowledged that the Municipality of San Juan has no study measuring the cruise industry’s economic impact on the historic district. Pizá Batiz resigned from his position in July.
According to the Puerto Rico Tourism Company, 1.6 million people visited Puerto Rico by cruise ship in 2025. Two million are projected to arrive in 2026, according to Clarivette Díaz Sosa, general manager of San Juan Cruise Port, the company that operates six cruise piers in San Juan under a public-private partnership, or P3.
Compared with the rest of the Caribbean, Puerto Rico ranked fifth among the destinations that received the most visitors in 2024, according to the cruise industry’s most recent study by the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association, or FCCA. It trailed Cozumel and Costa Maya in Mexico, as well as the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.
Gerardo González Núñez, an economist and director of the graduate program at Inter American University of Puerto Rico’s School of Business, said the cruise industry is predominantly a Caribbean phenomenon. The Caribbean is the world’s most visited cruise destination, according to the 2025 CLIA Global Market Report. That year, the region received 44% of all cruise passengers, about 16 million passengers. European destinations ranked second, with 9 million passengers.
Video by Brandon Cruz González | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
Still, “in terms of volume, the number of cruise passengers Puerto Rico receives is marginal compared with the number of tourists who arrive [by air],” González Núñez said. According to Tourism Company data, nearly 7.3 million tourists traveled to Puerto Rico by air in 2025, compared with 1.6 million who arrived by cruise ship.
Cruise passengers in Puerto Rico spent $367 million in 2024, according to a study by Discover Puerto Rico, the organization responsible for marketing Puerto Rico as a tourism destination. Discover Puerto Rico said those figures could be attributed to Old San Juan because most cruise ships visiting Puerto Rico dock there.
But the Puerto Rico Planning Board estimated in its most recent economic report that cruise passengers spent $228 million in Puerto Rico in 2024 — $139 million less than Discover Puerto Rico’s estimate. Discover Puerto Rico said its estimate was higher because it included members of the military in the excursionist category and used “a different model to analyze the data.”
The Planning Board’s analysis was also based on fiscal years, while Discover Puerto Rico uses calendar years.
Revenue Left on the Table
One of the Puerto Rico government’s tools for making the island a homeport for cruise lines, extending ships’ stays and increasing passenger volume is the use of economic incentives.
The Puerto Rico Incentives Code includes a portfolio of 12 incentives available to cruise lines and port agents. Port agents are companies that provide administrative and logistical services to cruise ships before, during and after they dock in Puerto Rico. The incentives include fee discounts and bonuses for using Puerto Rico as a homeport, incentives for vessels that remain in port for more than eight hours, and partial reimbursements for purchases of supplies, maintenance services and products.
Cruise lines receive discounts for each tourist who disembarks.
Photo by Brandon Cruz González | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
“The main incentive cruise ships receive is not a tax incentive, but an economic incentive that operates as a discount on the per-passenger fee and depends on the volume of passengers arriving in Puerto Rico,” the Department of Economic Development and Commerce said.
The incentives are not discretionary. The Tourism Company must grant them to any company or cruise ship operator that applies and meets the requirements established under Act 60-2019.
The Tourism Company estimated that from 2023 through 2025 it awarded at least $30.8 million in economic incentives to cruise lines Carnival Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean, as well as the port-agent companies Pérez & CIA and Continental Shipping.
The incentives are paid as reimbursements once “compliance with the requirements established by law is documented and validated,” Tourism Company press officer Reimarie Carrero said.
Pizá Batiz, who also headed the Puerto Rico Ports Authority during the previous four-year administration, said the incentives are intended to increase the number of passengers arriving in Puerto Rico.
“They’re going to put their ship in the destinations that generate the most money for them,” he said. “So, we, as destinations, are under pressure to figure out how to make ourselves more attractive and how to make the destination generate more money for the [cruise] line.”
The FCCA, whose members include executives from cruise lines and related industries, has actively lobbied for economic incentives before the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, the entity imposed by the U.S. Congress on Puerto Rico in 2016 to oversee the territory’s fiscal management and budget.
The Department of Economic Development and Commerce told the CPI that it measures the effectiveness of incentives through studies and return-on-investment analyses. But in its most recent report of this kind, published in 2024 using 2020 data, the cruise industry is mentioned only once, and the report offers no analysis of these economic incentives.
Decline in Gross Revenue
In 2023, the Puerto Rico government received nearly $21 million in revenue from fees and charges related to cruise traffic at piers then operated by the Puerto Rico Ports Authority.
Between February and March 2024, those operations were transferred from the Ports Authority to San Juan Cruise Port under a contract signed in 2022.
The P3 agreement, finalized during the administration of Gov. Pedro Pierluisi for a 30-year term, initially provides the Ports Authority with 5% of operating revenue.
That share will gradually increase to 9% over the first decade of the contract, according to financial analysis firm S&P Global.
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Photo by Brandon Cruz González | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
In 2024, the Ports Authority collected $4.7 million during the months it still operated the cruise piers, plus another $967,571 representing its contractual 5% share under the P3 agreement, according to data provided by the public corporation. In 2025, the Ports Authority received $1,435,507 from the total revenue collected by SJCP. The CPI requested SJCP’s total revenue figures, but they had not been provided by publication time.
SJCP is a subsidiary of Global Ports Holdings, which operates other cruise ports in the Caribbean, including in St. Lucia, the Bahamas and Antigua. In Puerto Rico, SJCP is responsible for “establishing, charging, retaining and enforcing payment of all cruise port-related revenues,” according to a document from its parent company.
The Ports Authority said the Puerto Rico government’s benefit from its agreement with San Juan Cruise Port is not limited to its share of operating revenue.
“Under the contract, SJCP assumed responsibility for developing and implementing, at its own expense, a comprehensive design, maintenance and construction program aimed at keeping the cruise port facilities safe, efficient and suitable for the industry’s needs,” the Ports Authority said. “In addition, SJCP must carry out repairs and improvements at several piers using its own resources, including work necessary to address structural deficiencies identified at the facilities,” it added.
On April 29 of this year, the Ports Authority transferred $98.2 million in federal funds to SJCP for repairs to the cruise port facilities, according to records from the Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico. The company says the rehabilitation project will cost $425 million and includes development of the port areas, which are divided into two districts: Old San Juan, where piers 1, 3 and 4 will be used for transit calls and luxury cruises; and the homeport district, which includes the Pan American piers and piers 11 and 13.
Reinvestment in the Economy?
Tourists arriving on cruise ships generate about half of merchants’ annual revenue, estimated Eddie Pérez Morales, director of the Corporación para el Desarrollo Empresarial y Cultural de la Isleta de San Juan (CODEVISA).
“Without the economic impact provided by cruise ships,” Pérez said, “merchants would be under a little more pressure.” Businesses in Old San Juan, like other small and midsize businesses across Puerto Rico, contend with high electricity costs, inflation and difficulty retaining employees. Old San Juan businesses face the additional challenges of operating in a city built during the Spanish colonial period.
The economic benefits generated by cruise passengers flow primarily to businesses closest to the piers or major tourist attractions, the CODEVISA director said. In his experience in the industry, tourists spend most heavily on souvenirs and local food.
The piraguas, El Morro Castle, and the pavas are icons of walking tours through Old San Juan.
Photo by Brandon Cruz González | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
As a result, neighborhood grocery stores, pharmacies and medical offices that residents need have been replaced in Old San Juan by bars, restaurants and souvenir shops, said Yoamadil Cabán González, a Sol Street resident. Those shops do not necessarily sell goods made by Puerto Rican artisans because generic souvenirs imported from China have proliferated, she said. Many residents have also moved away, and even the neighborhood’s only medical office has closed.
“[Old San Juan] is being transformed from the living, historic residential city [it once was] into a floating theme park that benefits only large corporations while weakening our health, our infrastructure, our biodiversity and, above all, our sense of community,” Cabán González told the CPI. “Cruise ships are not bringing a sustainable or respectful economy,” she said. “They are putting pressure on our infrastructure and driving out the businesses that residents actually need.”
Most of the souvenirs sold in many of the shops in Old San Juan are “Made in China.”
Photo by Brandon Cruz González | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
Because cruise passengers have meals and drinks included on board, their economic impact “is superficial and low-value,” Cabán González said.
Discover Puerto Rico spokesperson Karen Garnik said the organization’s perception studies show that tourists view Old San Juan’s residential and historic character positively.
“If you remove the residents, the rhythm fades. If you replace the traditional restaurant with a chain store, the flavor becomes generic. If you displace the artisan from Cristo Street, the architecture becomes a backdrop. We have seen this story play out in Venice [in Italy] and Dubrovnik [in Croatia]. We’re not interested in the sequel,” Garnik said. She added that decisions concerning port management, excursion contracts, businesses at the piers and ship arrivals “fall under the Puerto Rico Tourism Company and the Puerto Rico Ports Authority.”
Among residents’ many concerns is the construction, with support from the Tourism Company, of a Hard Rock-branded hotel across from the Port of San Juan. The project would require raising the site’s ground level and has a design that does not conform to Old San Juan’s architecture.
Impact on Infrastructure
“When those people disembark, that’s thousands of people coming into San Juan. There are no public restrooms here,” said Lourdes Suárez Valle, a Sol Street resident. “They walk around and buy one thing or another. But they’re not a particularly appealing clientele for businesses or for us.”
The former director of San Juan’s Department of Economic Development and Tourism said the municipality places portable toilets in the area on days when large numbers of cruise ships are in port. It plans to build 10 public restroom facilities at the former Old San Juan Tourism Office behind the Tapia Theater. According to the municipality’s 2025-2026 budget, the work would cost an estimated $230,000.
In October 2025, two months after the governor called for more cruise traffic while announcing the FCCA convention in Puerto Rico, Old San Juan residents and merchants accused PRASA of supplying cruise ships with water while they had gone without service for days.
PRASA told the CPI that cruise ships do not receive priority over other commercial and residential customers and said that during periods of low pressure or service interruptions, cruise ships are affected like any other customer.
“The Authority states that there are no records or evidence linking the presence of cruise ships at Old San Juan’s ports to adverse effects on the drinking water supply [for residents or businesses in the area],” PRASA press officer Gian Paul Luciano Ramos said.
But Luna Street resident Nitayno González Otero does not believe that.
González Otero said water pressure in homes in the historic district drops as the number of cruise ships increases. These fluctuations typically occur in the afternoon and last about two hours.
“The elevation where you live makes a difference. For example, I’m on Luna Street, and I’m on the first floor, and you can feel the difference in pressure. You can see just a trickle of water coming out. But people who live on the second or third floor, or on higher streets, are affected even more because the pressure simply doesn’t reach them,” he said.
PRASA supplied more than 105,000 cubic meters of water to cruise ships at the Port of San Juan from January 2019 through March 2024, according to Ports Authority data. That amount is equivalent to one month of water use for just over 6,000 households, which consume an average of 17 cubic meters per month, according to PRASA.
Tourists and Residents Compete for the Same Space
Víctor R. Castro Gómez, a Luna Street resident, said tourists and residents compete for the same pedestrian and roadway infrastructure.
“The first thing you see when those ships arrive is people competing for space, practically battling with vehicles,” he said.
Electric scooters and skateboards carrying tourists have become a common sight in Old San Juan.
Photo by Brandon Cruz González | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
The frenzy snarls traffic, particularly for residents and merchants, forcing them to adjust when they enter and leave the historic district.
It is also not unusual for Old San Juan’s cobblestones to become damaged or for streets to sink under the weight of vehicles and pedestrians. Many of these streets were built over vaulted structures and paved with blue cobblestones, some installed in the late 19th century and others added later as replacements.
The poor condition of many streets and sidewalks in the old city poses risks to residents and tourists.
Photo by Brandon Cruz González | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
Pizá Batiz said the municipality has a pedestrian plan for the historic district that is activated on certain streets only during special events, generally once a month. He added that turning Old San Juan into a pedestrian city would have to be accompanied by a more robust public transit system.
He also acknowledged that the municipality has no tourism carrying-capacity study to determine how many people can be in Old San Juan at the same time without jeopardizing its historic infrastructure and essential services for residents and businesses.
San Juan’s Office of Emergency Management has established a maximum capacity of 33,000 people in the city, but that threshold is intended to prevent emergencies or facilitate crowd management during large-scale events.
The increase in traffic in the port area sometimes causes transport providers to take two or three times as long as they used to to travel to drop off and pick up tourists.
Photo by Brandon Cruz González | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
Andy Rivera Rivera, founder of the Sociedad Puertorriqueña de Dibujos de Edificios Históricos, explained that during the first years after the U.S. invasion in 1898, water channels were designed beneath the streets of the Walled City as a key part of its aqueduct system. To date, 32 tunnels, 48 crypts and 1,232 cisterns are known to exist in Old San Juan. Although they are no longer in use, Rivera Rivera warned that this complex network of tunnels, crypts and cisterns makes the city’s streets vulnerable to excessive vehicle loads.
Lack of Will From Authorities
As Old San Juan residents tried to sleep one night in April 2024, a cruise ship was blasting music, its lights were on and its smokestacks were emitting a strong odor and soot. The light, noise and air pollution from the massive vessel made it impossible to fall asleep.
Residents called the Puerto Rico Police Bureau but were told the agency did not have jurisdiction to intervene. Police Bureau spokesperson Axel Valencia declined to address the residents’ allegations and said in a written response to the CPI that the Municipal Police is responsible for security in the community and the San Juan Bay area.
Contrary to Valencia’s statement, Puerto Rico Ports Authority regulations establish that the Puerto Rico Police Bureau must patrol port facilities alongside Ports Authority security officers to prevent crimes and other legal violations. Under the regulations, Ports Authority officers must cooperate with police investigations into alleged legal violations at port facilities and in the San Juan Bay area.
More than 100 Old San Juan residents signed a petition calling on the Tourism Company, the Ports Authority and the Municipality of San Juan to address their complaints.
“The increase in the number and size of cruise ships means more noise, light pollution and environmental pollution that negatively affect residents’ health, emotional well-being and peaceful coexistence in a city where people actually live,” said the letter sent by AVISAJ. “The mismanagement of cruise ships threatens our ability to live in health and harmony.”
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Photo by Brandon Cruz González | Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
Lilliam Cruz Viñas, a Sol Street resident, said the community also lacks enough law enforcement officers. Residents who call to file complaints find that there are not enough municipal officers or patrol cars, even though “fights have broken out” among tourists late at night, along with other violations of the Public Order Code.
“The police are absent,” she said. “I almost never call the police because it doesn’t really affect me, but it does affect my neighbors. So, what happens? They call the station, and the police say they don’t have patrol cars, that they don’t have motorcycles — if they answer at all, because they don’t always answer.”
Pizá Batiz said 85 Municipal Police officers are assigned to Old San Juan. Municipal data show that the officers have 18 motorcycles and eight patrol vehicles.
“The cruise industry stirs up a lot of passions, both among those who support it and those who oppose it,” he said. “Situations are going to arise, and they have to be mediated, always starting from the premise that this is an important [economic] segment and that we are competing with other jurisdictions.”
“We have to address these issues knowing that we cannot fall behind commercially,” he added.
The former official said he met periodically with residents and business owners in the area. He was unfamiliar with whether the Public Order Code applies to cruise ships.
Reinaldo Segurola Pérez, a Sol Street resident, documented on Facebook the incidents Old San Juan residents experienced almost daily and said he then forwarded them to the Municipality of San Juan. Even so, he said, communication with Mayor Miguel Romero was scarce and limited.
“Old San Juan is the place where anything goes,” Segurola said. “It’s one thing for Old San Juan to be an excellent tourist destination and another for it to be an excellent place to live.”
“Those are two different visions, and I’m not saying we have to choose one or the other,” he added. “But we have to find a way to reconcile those interests, which are sometimes in conflict with one another, so the residential community can be sustained.”
Segurola told the CPI that the failure to address residents’ concerns pushed him to move out of Old San Juan in late December. Old San Juan’s urban core lost 32% of its population between 2010 and 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Its population fell from 3,570 residents in 2010 to 2,417 in 2020. Across the entire San Juan Islet, the population declined 10%.
This investigation was made possible in part with support from the Metcalf Ocean Nexus Academy program, created by Ocean Nexus and the Metcalf Institute in collaboration with The Uproot Project.
Bigger ships, smaller returns? The Caribbean’s cruise bargain under strain
Cruise visits to Caribbean ports have more than doubled since 2000, rising from about 14.5 million arrivals to roughly 35.5 million in 2025, according to the Caribbean Tourism Organization. The industry and its backers promise economic growth, but critics say the cruise bargain is becoming increasingly unfavorable for island destinations.
Bigger ships, smaller returns? The Caribbean’s cruise bargain under strain
On a February afternoon at the height of a record tourism season in the British Virgin Islands, three cruise ships with room for more than 13,000 passengers towered over Road Harbour seaport.
Ashore, the Cyril B. Romney Tortola Pier Park bustled with visitors. Some crowded into shops or posed for selfies on the waterfront. Others boarded tour buses headed for beaches and historic sites.
But a short walk away, at Brandini’s Lemonade, Brandon Andrew was not impressed.
“From here, it don’t feel like three ships in,” he said from beside his one-man roadside stand near the pier park. “I look at my cash, and I’m like, ‘Damn.’”
Though cruise passengers had been streaming past his business all day, only a handful had stopped to buy drinks.
“From my point of view, my angle, I don’t really think they spend a lot,” he said.
Mr. Andrew is not the only one to notice this disconnect.
Amid a post-pandemic boom, Caribbean cruise arrivals climbed to a record 35.5 million last year, up nearly 17% from 2019. Cruise lines do not plan to stop there. As they build larger megaships and add itineraries, many governments are racing to expand ports and other attractions to accommodate them.
Passengers head ashore at Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic.
Photo by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
More passengers, they say, mean economic growth for the islands.
But an investigation by Centro de Periodismo Investigativo and The BVI Beacon found that passenger numbers tell only part of the story.
In interviews across the region, critics including researchers, business owners, environmentalists, tour operators and hoteliers argued that the Caribbean cruise bargain has long favored the industry over island destinations.
Now, they see the scale tipping further as the sector expands: The islands, they said, are absorbing increasing congestion, environmental damage and infrastructure pressure while cruise lines find new ways to capture more passenger spending before it ever reaches local communities.
“What are they really benefiting from when they come to the Caribbean?” asked Trinidadian economist Marla Dukharan. “It’s really our sun, sea and sand. Are we capitalizing properly on our sun, sea and sand, or are we all racing to the bottom and competing with each other to give the tourists the lowest price — which means we are not reaping the financial benefits?”
Decades of Growth
The modern cruise industry was built on scale.
In 1970, about half a million people worldwide took cruises. Since then, the industry has grown into a mass-market business that rebounded quickly even after the pandemic brought it to a near-total standstill for more than a year.
In 2025, a record 37.2 million people globally took an ocean-going cruise, up from 29.7 million in 2019, according to the Cruise Lines International Association. An industry-leading 44% of them — more than 16 million passengers — sailed itineraries in the Caribbean, Bahamas, and Bermuda, which typically include multiple port visits.
The ships have grown too. The Pacific Princess, made famous by the television show “The Love Boat” in the late 1970s, was about 550 feet long and carried a little over 600 passengers.
Today, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, one of the largest cruise ships now sailing the Caribbean, can carry as many as 7,600 passengers and more than 2,000 crewmembers. Across its 20 decks are more than 20 dining options, 14 retail venues, seven pools, a waterpark, a surf simulator, and a thrill ride that swings guests high above the ocean.
For passengers, the appeal is straightforward. A cruise vacation, which often comes with a relatively modest upfront price tag, includes meals, entertainment and visits to multiple destinations.
“It’s just the fact that you can go to different islands and see and just learn about their islands,” Dana Kaiser, a tourist from Missouri, said during a February visit to the BVI with family and friends aboard the 4,070-passenger-capacity Norwegian Epic. “That’s what interests us a lot.”
Dana Kaiser, third from right, poses with family and friends in front of the Norwegian Epic in Road Town in the British Virgin Islands.
Photo by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
For Caribbean governments, the promise is equally clear. Cruise passengers fill taxis, book excursions, buy jewelry and T-shirts, visit restaurants and bars, pay port fees, and help support jobs in places where tourism is often the largest employer.
In some communities, entire economies have grown up around the sector.
“Without this industry, our island simply can’t function, because we have very limited diversification in the economic sector,” said Ed Forbes, an eco-tour operator in Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos Islands. “It’s really our lifeline.”
The cruise pier that opened on Grand Turk in 2006 has helped transform the island’s economy, which had long struggled to replace the salt industry that collapsed in the 1960s.
But Mr. Forbes is keenly aware of the trade-offs: dredging to build the pier, reef damage from silt stirred up by ships, and heavy beach traffic from an industry that can more than double the island’s population of about 5,000 on busy days.
“You’re choosing between the environment and the economy,” he said. “And Grand Turk in particular, a tiny island like this, we need both of those to survive.”
Video by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
Cruise lines say they work hard to strike that balance responsibly.
“The cruise industry are committed citizens,” said Michele Paige, the longtime CEO of the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA), the industry’s main lobby group in the region. “We really care about the destinations... If you do business with the community, you have to be involved with the community, and the cruise industry is.”
A Shifting Balance?
Critics say the balance has increasingly shifted in cruise lines’ favor.
Dr. Ross Klein, a Canada-based sociologist who has written extensively on the industry and taken dozens of cruises himself, has long argued that cruise lines overstate economic benefits and downplay impacts.
Meanwhile, he said, they have become increasingly skilled at capturing passenger spending through approved-vendor arrangements, shore-excursion commissions, onboard retail and other strategies.
Researchers have highlighted such tactics for decades. A 2007 study of Croatian ports, for instance, estimated that cruise lines retained about 60% of the price paid for excursions sold on board.
But Dr. Klein said the imbalance has only intensified.
“The industry has become more and more sophisticated in playing ports in ways that the port gets less and less and the cruise ship ends up with more and more,” Dr. Klein said, adding, “Ports don’t even realize that they’re giving away things they shouldn’t be giving away.”
The logical endpoint of this approach, Dr. Klein said, is the private destination. Under that increasingly popular model, cruise lines own or lease an island or coastline that is often closed to the public, diverting calls away from traditional Caribbean ports and sometimes using their own staff to serve food and drinks supplied by their ships.
Today, there are at least a dozen private cruise destinations in the wider Caribbean, up from about six a decade ago.
“If you’ve got a private island seeing 365 ships in a year, that’s 365 port calls that don’t happen in the Caribbean,” Dr. Klein said.
Ms. Dukharan, the economist, said the same dynamic is playing out on board as the ships grow larger.
“The cruise lines are more and more becoming the destination,” she said. “They’re not interested in people coming off the ship and spending money in your restaurant. They’re interested in that spend staying in their wallet.”
A Welcoming Region
At several European ports, rapid cruise growth has drawn public backlash in recent years.
In Venice and Marseille, activists protesting overtourism have used canoes and other small boats to block cruise ships. In Barcelona, protestors have sprayed passengers with water pistols.
The Caribbean has been more welcoming.
Video by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
Across much of the region, governments have actively courted the latest megaships, expanding piers and other port infrastructure even as local debates have intensified during the post-pandemic boom.
The Bahamas, the first or last stop for many Caribbean cruises out of Florida, has led the way.
Buoyed by new private cruise destinations — including Carnival’s $600 million Celebration Key on Grand Bahama and Disney’s up-to-$400 million Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point in Eleuthera — the country clocked a region-high 10.6 million cruise arrivals in 2025, outnumbering its overnight arrivals by nearly six to one.
“I wouldn’t use the term ‘expanding’ to the Bahamas,” said Eric Carey, a former executive director of the Bahamas National Trust. “I would probably use ‘exploding.’ The cruise industry really has expanded at a very rapid rate in the Bahamas and throughout the Caribbean.”
The boom, however, hasn’t reached all destinations evenly. Bahamas cruise arrivals have almost doubled since 2019, and the Dominican Republic’s climbed even more sharply, from roughly 1.1 million in 2019 to nearly 2.8 million in 2025. Several other destinations also saw increases over the period, ranging from about 9% in Curaçao to roughly 52% in the BVI.
But others — including Puerto Rico, Sint Maarten and Barbados — did not yet regain 2019 levels last year even though year-on-year numbers grew amid pier investments and other official growth efforts.
As such islands compete for calls, a few communities have pushed back against the industry in recent years. In the Cayman Islands last year, voters rejected cruise-berthing infrastructure in a referendum by a margin of nearly 69%.
“Our message was always quality over quantity,” said Michelle Lockwood, a founding member of Cruise Port Referendum Cayman, which advocated against the proposed expansion. “We didn’t want to lose what made us Caymanian.”
In Cozumel, Mexico, federal environmental authorities in February effectively halted plans for a fourth cruise pier after years of litigation and community opposition centered largely around environmental concerns.
Other islands are still deciding on their strategy.
Video by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
The BVI’s Question
The BVI, a British overseas territory with fewer than 40,000 residents, is now wrestling with a question facing many Caribbean destinations: build bigger, or stick to the status quo?
For decades, the territory marketed itself mainly as a luxury resort, villa and yachting destination. But it has also invested heavily in cruise tourism.
The current cruise pier park, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in February, brought larger ships directly into the capital of Road Town and added shops, restaurants and tour operations around the port.
Since the pandemic, the government has worked closely with the FCCA to boost cruise numbers, and last year a record of more than 875,000 passengers outnumbered overnight visitors by nearly three to one.
This year, BVI port officials expect more than a million passengers — a total that industry estimates suggest could generate well over $100 million in direct cruise-related spending.
Above, Dorcas Fahie shows off a certificate honouring the tour company she operates with her husband in the British Virgin Islands. The company was recognised in February during the 10th anniversary celebrations for the expanded Cyril B. Romney Tortola Pier Park (below) in the capital of Road Town.
Photos by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
Leaders do not plan to stop there.
The world’s largest megaships have already outgrown the existing pier, and the government is considering whether to expand to accommodate them.
“We are about to initiate a process to assess how best we can improve [the pier] to accommodate larger vessels,” stated BVI Communications and Works Minister Kye Rymer, who has responsibility for ports. “At the same time, we are developing a master plan that spans from the pier park to the ferry terminal, including a boardwalk.”
The prospect of expansion is controversial.
Tour operators are among the strongest supporters. At the pier park on a busy cruise day in February, Dorcas Fahie was supervising drivers who operate her fleet of 10 buses. She acknowledged that companies that work directly with cruise lines give up a share of their revenue, but she said the access is worth it.
“We need another port of call, and of course, more ships coming, and we would like to see them come all year round,” she said, adding that she would like the territory to accommodate the world’s biggest cruise ships. “I think there’s no harm in getting one or two, and of course it would lend more to the economy.”
A man fishes near the Icon of the Seas, one of the three largest cruise ships in the world, at PortMiami.
Photo by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
Asked whether the BVI should stop at the number of cruise passengers projected for this year, she grinned.
“Keep going,” she said. “Keep on going.”
That view is popular with taxi drivers, as well as some entrepreneurs who run businesses in the pier park and other areas that cater to cruise visitors.
But many resort operators, villa owners and yacht charterers strongly disagree.
They argue that the vacation experience of overnight visitors — who spend more time and money in the territory — suffers when cruise crowds overwhelm popular attractions like Cane Garden Bay beach on the island of Tortola and The Baths on Virgin Gorda.
“Expanding our cruise pier to accommodate larger ships without first addressing the strain on our already inadequate infrastructure is not just premature — it is irresponsible,” said Sharon Flax-Brutus, a former BVI tourism director who now manages high-end villas on Virgin Gorda.“If the cruise industry is to continue benefiting from our shores, then it must also be part of the solution — through meaningful, sustained investment in the destinations that sustain it.”
Ms. Paige said such steps are already in the works in the territory, including moves to reduce overcrowding at The Baths and other attractions.
“We’ve worked very diligently with the [National Parks] to not only look at different opportunities but also have some of the cruise lines invest in infrastructure in the BVI,” she said.
Premier Natalio “Sowande” Wheatley, the tourism minister, has spoken similarly, pushing for cruise growth while also stressing the government’s commitment to balance.
“Let me say clearly: My government values the cruise sector. Because cruise tourism supports hardworking Virgin Islanders: taxi operators, tour providers, restaurants, retailers, vendors, small businesses, and families whose livelihoods depend on visitor activity,” Mr. Wheatley said during his annual State of the Territory Address in June, adding, “We understand very well, however, how overcrowding can negatively impact the visitor experience, and that is why we are laser focused on developing additional attractions for wider distribution of visitors.”
At Brandini’s Lemonade, Mr. Andrew said he is not opposed to the cruise industry. He built his business in part to serve it.
But after selling lemonade near the pier park for about three years, he said his most reliable customers are residents and overnight visitors, and he is not convinced that bigger ships would mean more business for vendors like him.
“They just want to be here to say, ‘I’ve been to — boom — take a picture,’” he said of many passengers from the largest ships that currently call in the BVI. “How does the people of the BVI benefit from that, outside of taxi drivers?”
At the nearby Crafts Alive Village, vendors have long complained that cruise passengers are shuttled too quickly from ships to taxis to beaches, leaving little time for local stalls.
“The cruise ships are coming, but like everything else, we are not really, you know, making money,” said village vendor Rasheda Durante, who has sold handmade dolls and other goods to cruise tourists for about three decades. “We’ve been just holding on, and that’s about it.”
Rasheda shows one of the dolls she sells at Crafts Alive Village in Road Town.
Photo by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
Billion-Dollar Promises
When Caribbean leaders defend cruise expansion, they often cite economic-impact studies published by the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA).
The latest, released in 2024, estimated that cruise tourism generated more than $4 billion in direct expenditures across 33 destinations in the Caribbean, Mexico and Central and South America during the 2023-2024 cruise year.
Those figures included passenger spending, crew spending, port fees, taxes and cruise-line purchases. The study also said the spending supported more than 94,000 jobs and about $1.28 billion in wages that year.
“What the cruise industry brings should never be looked at as just taxation,” Ms. Paige said. “Number one, the cruise industry spends billions of dollars marketing the destinations. … Number two, then we do bring the ships, and we pay for the privilege of bringing the ships.”
Ms. Paige described cruise tourism as relatively low-impact and pushed back against the claim that it harms the overnight sector. Overnight visitors, she said, typically spend days in a destination, while cruise passengers stay just for a few hours — and sometimes return for longer visits themselves.
She also defended private cruise destinations, saying that they spread visitors beyond crowded ports, improve guest experiences and create jobs.
“We are trying to augment the experiences,” Ms. Paige said. “We try to provide to the guests what they want, and we’ve been begging the destinations for more product.”
Above, cruise tourists ride horses in early January at Half Moon Cay, one of Carnival’s private island destinations in the Bahamas. Below, construction was under way nearby for an expansion that included a cruise ship pier that opened last month. Before the pier was built, ships had to anchor offshore and take passengers to land on tenders.
Photo by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
The Missing Numbers
Critics say the industry’s preferred numbers are incomplete at best.
A 2018 study Dr. Klein and other researchers conducted in Halifax, Nova Scotia, found that cruise lines overestimated passenger spending at the port by about 30%. He has also questioned the transparency of the FCCA-commissioned studies, noting that the association does not release all the underlying data.
Ms. Dukharan said the bigger problem is the studies’ fundamental approach: They assess economic inflows without measuring social and environmental impacts such as congestion, road maintenance, policing, waste management, reef damage or the opportunity cost of using limited coastal land for cruise infrastructure.
“No country in the Caribbean has done an economic impact assessment of the tourism sector, and I think it’s because the politicians know that the story is not going to be as rosy as them standing up and saying, ‘500,000 people visited this year,’” Ms. Dukharan said, adding, “The politicians prioritize arrivals over value. Why? Because they’ve never measured value.”
Not far from the cruise port in Sint Maarten, a landfill towers over Philipsburg. Critics say that trash is among many impacts cruise tourists bring.
Photo by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
Mr. Carey said he has watched this dynamic play out in the Bahamas.
“Our Minister of Tourism says we have record numbers of cruise visitors to our country,” he said. “There’s never any reference to what the impact is environmentally, culturally, socially on our islands.”
In a few Caribbean destinations, independent researchers have measured such impacts.
A 2025 study estimated that anchors from cruise ships stationed off Barbados at the start of the pandemic damaged about 50 acres of coral-rich habitat between March and September 2020.
In Trujillo, Honduras, a 2018 study examined a controversial cruise development and found that community benefits did not accrue as predicted — the researchers, for instance, found few gains in employment and income — despite substantial environmental and social impacts and increased corruption.
A 2017 study of residents near a new cruise pier in Falmouth, Jamaica, found that 78% reported stress linked to increased cost of living, pollution, congestion, displacement and other issues.
But such studies remain relatively rare. And in the absence of robust monitoring requirements and other legislation, Dr. Klein said, many impacts often go unidentified.
“If you don’t have a law, you can’t look,” he said, “And if you’re not looking, you’re not going to find it.”
Region of ‘Price Takers’
Last year, the World Bank made similar arguments in a report titled “Rethinking Caribbean Tourism: Strategies for a More Sustainable Future.”
It described the cruise industry as highly concentrated, with Carnival Corporation, Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line controlling nearly 80% of the passenger market as of 2024.
This concentration, the report suggested, gives the cruise industry growing leverage over small island governments, which it described as largely “price takers,” players with little room to negotiate the terms set by the major cruise lines.
“The Caribbean is the largest region for cruise ship tourism, but gets the least per passenger than any other region in the world,” Lilia Burunciuc, the World Bank’s director for the Caribbean, said last September during a regional conference held after the report’s release, adding, “This is because there is a race to the bottom — again, because the region is not acting as a region.”
The report recommended regional cooperation on passenger and environmental fees, greater transparency surrounding the collection and use of fees, stronger local linkages and better environmental monitoring.
Cruise passengers disembark at the Cyril B. Romney Tortola Pier Park in Road Town, the capital of the British Virgin Islands.
Video by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
But such efforts have failed before.
In 1993, Caribbean Community leaders agreed in principle to a uniform cruise passenger tax, but it never took effect. A decade later, tourism ministers backed a proposed $20 regional cruise levy, only for the plan to collapse amid industry opposition.
Dr. Klein said cruise lines and their lobby groups have repeatedly used their leverage to block Caribbean unity.
“They’ll make sure that the partners don’t trust each other, or they’ll offer incentives to one partner or another that will cause the partnerships to begin to fray,” he said.
He added that the industry has used similar tactics elsewhere too, but jurisdictions including Alaska, Hawaii and California have shown it is possible to push back.
The industry has also opposed fee increases at the local level. The World Bank report noted that cruise lines opposed Antigua and Barbuda’s recent efforts to raise its $1.50-per-passenger environmental fee to $2. It added that most other Caribbean countries have also kept their environmental fees at around $1.50 — a rate sometimes insufficient to cover environmental costs.
Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association CEO Michele Paige speaks during a press conference promoting the cruise industry in the British Virgin Islands in May 2024.
Photo by Allison Vaughn | The BVI Beacon
Ms. Paige denied that the FCCA categorically opposes fee increases. She said the organization wants advance notice and clear explanations of how any new fee would be used.
“We also want the money to go to product,” she said, referring to attractions and infrastructure designed to better accommodate tourists. “We want it to go into having a better experience.”
She also denied that the FCCA opposes regional collaboration, though she said the industry prefers to negotiate with destinations individually.
“Why would we want price fixing?” she asked. “Do you think that all the products are the same? We work with people. We work with individual governments. We work with the individual private sector.”
“The dirty little secret with the cruise industry is we’re in business to make money,” she said. “And we’re going to put the ships — that are movable assets — where we can make the most money. And if we can make more money in other places, we bring ships to where people want to go.”
Video by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
Saying Yes
Though the Caribbean has generally welcomed cruise ships, not every destination has responded to the industry in the same way.
St. Maarten is known for saying yes. Philipsburg, the capital, is one of the region’s best-known cruise ports, with two cruise piers that each can handle multiple large ships at once. With a population of about 43,000, the country logged 1.6 million cruise visitors in 2025, up from the previous year but below the 2014 peak of more than two million.
The 2024 FCCA study estimated that cruise tourism generated nearly $238 million in direct expenditures in St. Maarten during the 2023-2024 cruise year, placing it fifth among the 33 destinations studied.
But on a six-ship day in February, several business owners on Front Street said bigger crowds no longer guarantee sales.
“Now we’re seeing an uptick in the number of arrivals, but not necessarily in the quality of cruise tourism,” said Haresh Sachdev at Laurent Avenue clothes shop, which his family has operated since 1980. “That has definitely dropped.”
He added that businesses can make more money in the nearby pier park, which is closed to the public, but he said rents there are prohibitively steep for most. Mr. Sachdev also questioned whether bigger ships are the answer, suggesting that cruise partners should be chosen based in part on which passengers spend more on shore.
“To me, I think the smaller cruise ships are the ones we should be targeting,” he said.
The Island That Said No
About 12 miles north, Anguilla has taken a very different path.
For years, the British overseas territory has turned away large cruise ships in favor of a high-end overnight model built around luxury resorts and villas.
Haydn Hughes, a former tourism minister, said he still supports that approach. Though he acknowledged the benefits of the smaller cruise vessels that regularly bring a few hundred passengers to Anguilla, he said megaships carrying thousands of people are different.
“I don’t think they add any benefit — financial and otherwise — to the jurisdiction,” he said. “It comes with environmental problems, not only in terms of the physical environment but also the social environment, the social impact.”
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Anguilla has long said no to large cruise ships, instead marketing its uncrowded beaches and high-end resorts.
Photo by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
In 2022, Mr. Hughes made that case publicly at a Caribbean Tourism Organization conference in the Cayman Islands. The statement was so unusual that it made global headlines. Afterward, he said, other tourism ministers privately told him they supported his position but were already too deeply committed to cruise tourism to change course.
Back home, not everyone agreed.
At Blanchards Beach Shack, co-owner Miguel Leveret said luxury hotels create jobs but are largely owned by foreign companies, while well-managed cruise tourism could create more opportunities for local entrepreneurs.
“Anguillians need to be entrepreneurs also,” he said. “We don’t have $200 million to build the hotel. So I see cruise tourism as a way to provide opportunities for local people to open businesses.”
Miguel Leveret poses at Blanchards Beach Shack in Anguila.
Photo by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
Mr. Leveret did not call for a St. Maarten-style model, but for setting higher limits on ship numbers using careful planning to protect the island’s overnight sector.
“I don’t think that we should go crazy like some other places,” he said. “We don’t have the capacity. But I think in a limited way we can do it.”
For others, Anguilla’s resistance is a matter of principle.
At Sandy Ground, a beachside community on Anguilla’s north shore, fisherman Edwin Carty recalled a past effort by one of the major cruise lines to develop a private-island-style cruise project on an island where he had an interest. He said he refused.
“You can’t sell everything you have,” he said. “You don’t look at it for yourself. You look at it for the future of the country, the future of the generation coming up behind.”
Fisherman Edwin Carty lives on the beach in Sandy Ground, Anguilla.
Photo by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
A Better Bargain?
As the islands wrestle with the cruise question, the industry continues to grow. CLIA projects a 13% increase in global cruise passengers by 2029.
“Over the next five years, we will have 68 ships coming online,” Ms. Paige said. “The Caribbean is going to be the recipient of growth because of what’s happening in the world, but also because the Caribbean is a safe, secure environment.”
She said islands can maximize their benefits by expanding and diversifying their tourism products to encourage passengers to spend more time and money on shore.
“We need to work diligently to showcase that the Caribbean is a demand destination that has the product that Europe has: that it’s not just sun, sea and sand,” she said. “We underline to the destination: ‘Stop hiding behind the Caribbean brand. Start to focus on what makes you unique, what makes you special. It’s the people, the customs, the culinary experience — all the things that you produce, not things that you buy in China.’”
Even the industry’s critics rarely argue that the ships should be turned away altogether. But they say Caribbean governments should negotiate a better deal as larger ships and private destinations transform the cruise economy.
For Ms. Dukharan, the way forward requires better counting and a clearer message to the industry.
“You have to make sure to message right and say to the cruise lines, ‘We’re happy to have you within certain boundaries,’” she said. “‘We’re happy to have you if you want to come here and give an authentic experience, and one that is not a race to the bottom of who’s going to give you the best price for coming.’”
Back at Brandini’s Lemonade in February, Mr. Andrew watched the crowds file past, greeting them with friendly banter in the hope that a few would stop.
For 40 minutes, only one group of cruise passengers — a family from Guadeloupe — bought drinks. Then they moved on.
Brandon Andrew adjusts the sign at his lemonade stand on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands.
Photo by Freeman Rogers | The BVI Beacon
“At one point, it got really slow: I started to look for a job,” Mr. Andrew said, adding, “But I just had an epiphany, man: This is what I love doing; this is what brings me the most joy. … Once the weather is good, I’m out here.”
Now, he aims to keep improving his business, making it more “Instagrammable” and otherwise boosting his marketing.
“I could be wrong, but I believe in myself,” he said. “Once I get everything into fruition like the vision I see in my head — once I bring it to reality, it don’t matter if these people want a drink or not: They’re gonna stop.”
