Aruba’s only strong competitive advantage is its safety
ORANJESTAD, Aruba – September 18th, 2016: Last week Resonance, a leading tourism consulting firm, released its 2016 report on the quantity and quality of tourism experiences found in 28 different Caribbean islands as ranked by visitors on websites such as Trip Advisor. There was one area where Aruba received a strong rating and that was safety where we were ranked number 2 out of all the 28 islands.
However Aruba achieved an overall ranking of 7 out of the 28 Caribbean islands with the quality of culture (9) culinary experiences (10) sightseeing (11), sports and adventure (12) and lodging (14) being just above average and with entertainment (6) receiving a relatively good rating as did the quality of airline connections (6).
It is vitally important therefore that we do everything possible to ensure that Aruba continues to offer a safe experience both for its residents and its visitors alike. AHATA is concerned that the recent increase in criminal activity, and the changing nature of that criminal activity, needs to be addressed as soon as possible before it further threatens the well-being of the thousands of Arubans who work in the tourism sector and before it has a serious negative impact on our primary economic pillar.
AHATA would recommend that particular attention be made to providing substantial additional resources to protecting our borders as well as improving the way visitors who overstay their permitted period of stay are located, detained and re-patriated. As well the Aruba’s Police Force (KPA) needs additional personnel, vehicles, computer equipment to combat cyber crime as well as more cameras. At the same time the KIA prison, which is almost 30 years old, needs substantial renovation and expansion.
Consequently AHATA fully supports the request of the Minister of Justice for the Government to allocate additional funds in the Government’s 2017 budget to fight crime. Basically what Resonance did was look at all the customers’ reviews and count up the number of times visitors ranked an experience as either very good or excellent. The experiences included culture, entertainment, sightseeing, sports and adventure, culinary (dining), and lodging (hotels, resorts and other accommodation). They also rated the quality of the airline connectivity (number of nonstop/direct flights) and safety (using the most recent records for the number of murders). When the rankings were adjusted for size of the island’s tourism sector (i.e. the number of experiences were rated on a per 100,000 visitor basis) Aruba fell right into the middle of the pack with an overall rating of 14 out 28 and with sightseeing (22), sport and adventure (22), culinary (18) and lodging(24) all falling below average.