Gay Nagle Myers
Insight: Puerto Rico s lessons learned
Tourism professionals assessed how the island s crisis preparedness and recovery strategies will play a role in the post-Covid era.
Ponce s Mercedita International airport on the south coast and Aguadilla s Rafael Hernandez airport on the northwestern tip of the island had both been closed to commercial flights since March 20, 2020, when the pandemic hit.
San Juan s Luis Munoz Marin International airport in San Juan remained open this past year.
JetBlue now offers flights from JFK and Orlando to Ponce; Spirit has service from Orlando to Aguadilla.
Covid safety measures are in place at both airports, and entry requirements remain the same as in San Juan: Arriving passengers must fill out an online travel declaration form and produce a negative Covid test result taken 72 hours prior to arrival. This applies to travelers who have already been vaccinated.
Puerto Rico s experience in crisis management has been sorely tested during Covid-19.
The pandemic struck as earthquakes were battering the south coast and parts of the island had not yet recovered from the damage inflicted by Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Discover Puerto Rico last week convened a diverse group of tourism professionals to assess how lessons learned from the island s crisis preparedness and recovery strategies will play a role in the post-Covid era. There is nothing more critical than learning from the challenges that Covid-19 has presented our industry, said Brad Dean, CEO of Discover Puerto Rico.
Maintaining constant communication with the local Puerto Rican business community was essential to balance the health crisis with the pandemic s economic impact, according to Manuel Laboy, executive director of Puerto Rico s Central Office of Reconstruction, Recovery & Resiliency.
Gay Nagle Myers
How a Caribbean island and a Caribbean hotelier are coping with a second border closure at the height of the peak winter season is just one story, among many, during this pandemic.
The eight-square-mile French island of St. Barts, 22 miles southeast of St. Maarten, had reopened on June 22. But it wasn t until the Caribbean s Festive season swung into full gear that its visitor surge began to take off: More than 4,300 passengers arrived on commercial flights to the island between Dec. 19 and 31, only 17% fewer than the same period in 2019, according to figures released by the Collective de Saint Barthelemy.
Schoolchildren outside of the new planetarium on the island of St. Eustatius.
There s big news on the tiny eight-square-mile volcanic island of St. Eustatius known as Statia in the northeastern Caribbean.
The island is now home to the first planetarium in the Caribbean, which opened last month near the soon-to-open Oasis Golden Rock Resort on the southeast coast.
The project was spearheaded by Jaap Vreeling, a retired astronomy professor from the University of Amsterdam who long dreamed of being able to bring a planetarium to Statia. I m not a native Statian, but my wife and I worked here from 1986 to 1991 in secondary education projects, Vreeling said. We just retired, and we have a house on Statia and plan to live here permanently.
Gay Nagle Myers
How has Covid-19 impacted the Caribbean s peak season? Has Covid ended it forever, or at least for the near term?
These questions were tackled during a recent Caribbean Tourism Organization webinar that explored the effects of the pandemic on travel to the region.
It was just one year ago that the first case of Covid in the region was diagnosed in the Dominican Republic, inadvertently brought in by a traveler from Italy. He was hospitalized and treated, and he eventually recovered and returned to Italy. By then cases were spiraling in many countries and we all know how that story has played out.