caribny wrote:Question for you. Do you consider yourself to be "European" because that is the legal definition of someone from PTP/FDF? I think that the ABC islands with their links to South America, Caribbean and even the USA, in addition to the EU result in a more complex identity. This is why CUR has (pre pandemic) airlift to a broader range of destinations than FDF has. At some point you guys even had flights from Brazil!
I suspect that AMS isnt the center of your world the way that PAR will be from someone from FDF or CAY, or even PTP. Travel from France to the Antilles is due not only to leisure/VFR but also the complex travel by French bureaucrats in both directions. A fair % of their hospitals are staffed by people from the mainland, and a good % of the civil service in those islands come from the mainland. Even their police force! I think that the ABC (well maybe not Bonaire) are much more locally run so less gov't travel to AMS. PAR to FDF travel is like PAR to Marseilles which is why their travel numbers are so high.
TAB will once again get back its 1w JFK service on BW soon, aimed no doubt at the VFR. My point about TAB is that CUR until maybe about 5 years ago ignored the US market, and as a result has lagged behind AUA, even though it has (at least in my opinion) a more distinctive product. Now that it has increased promotion we were seeing (pre pandemic) more US visitors. AUA is interchangeable with CUN and PUJ. CUR is unique and increasingly this is what people in the more upscale markets want this. It has a cultural blend and Willemstad is increasingly known as a Heritage site and a walkable city with less of the poverty that visitors might encounter in some other Caribbean islands. TABs problem is that they are tied to a nation which assigns no value to tourism, and in fact even boasts that they do not need it.
Also TAB has a domestic tourism market, which might also be why their international marketing is sloppy. POS TAB is a big market with BW (pre pandemic) running maybe as many as 500k travelers R/T. Without the Trinidadian TAB would have no tourism sector. As some else pointed out their international tourism arrivals have collapsed.
Hi caribny, you have valid points which is why I said that we are far from the level that Guadeloupe and Martinique is but without the Netherlands we wouldn't survive. Some people here don't want to see that but that's the reality. We get traffic from other countries of course, but it doesn't make us less independent. Who is the one giving us a loan of about 200 million euros financial support for the pandemic? The Netherlands. Our legal system is based on that of the Netherlands. Our Coast Guard is Dutch and they assist all the islands of the Dutch Caribbean. Our education system is based on the Dutch system (even though it can be improved much more). We do run our own island but at the same time we are dependent on the Netherlands as much as some locals here like and dislike this. Without the Netherlands we would be in a much worse position, financially. In that sense we are different than most other Caribbean islands and have more similarities to the French Caribbean. We're not fully integrated as the French Caribbean is to France but we do have a certain level and degree of integration with the Netherlands throughout our system.
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