St. Maarten may have reached its limit on hotel development, with a carrying capacity study now expected to determine the country’s maximum threshold for growth, Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunications (TEATT) Grisha Heyliger-Marten said during the live Council of Ministers press briefing on Wednesday.
“You have two major hotel developments coming up and by 2028 Setai, that’s going to be about 400 rooms, and then also looking at Planet Hollywood also coming into play very soon, that will be another 400 to 600 rooms,” the Minister stated, adding that Mullet Bay might also soon become a target for development. The Minister questioned whether additional development beyond these projects is necessary.
While we wholeheartedly agree that the island appears to have reached the limits of sustainable tourism, the question is whether we need more “studies” to come to that conclusion. One could argue that an electrical grid cracking at the seams, daily traffic jams and a rapidly growing dump on Pond Island are only some of the most glaring symptoms of uncontrolled growth. As is the erosion of our natural environment due to overdevelopment of the hillsides. And the minister did not even mention the effects of mass cruise tourism on the island with the gridlock resulting of traffic slowing bus and quad tours.
But governing without proper data to back up policy is also unwise. And it is easier to identify the problem than to give a tailored solution. Government is therefore assessing the situation through a carrying capacity study. “The carrying capacity study will not just look at the amount of people that can come to the country or the amount of people that are living here, but it will also look at the amount of cars, the infrastructure, everything, a full blanket approach, and with the outcome of that we can then say this is the max, this is our carrying capacity, this is where we stop.”
The Ministry of VROMI in collaboration with UNOPS is also planning to carry out a mobility study to determine the best way to improve traffic flow on the dutchside. The problem is that studies far too often have a habit of ending up gathering dust in the drawer of some government desk. They are a quick way of showing “government is working on it” but that is about it.
The government should be given the benefit of the doubt as long as the studies are carried out with the appropriate speed and followed up with equally determined policy development. In the meantime, the minister is right to have put a moratorium on taxi and bus licences. Perhaps those could be extended to new hotel projects and cruise ship calls as well!
