By ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Grand Bahama taxi drivers are looking to the Government to help remedy a significant loss of business caused by the opening of Carnival Cruise Lines’ $600m Celebration Key project.

Speaking after drivers met with the JoBeth Coleby-Davis, minister of energy and transport last Monday, Grand Bahama Taxi Union president, Harold Curry, said further talks are scheduled with her as well as with Carnival.

Disclosing that the union has also met with Chester Cooper, deputy prime minister and minister of tourism, investments and aviation, on the issue, Mr Curry said the next meeting is set for October 16.

“She's [Mrs Coleby-Davis] working on it,” Mr Curry said. “She's working on it hard. She's doing a tremendous job with us. As a matter of fact, Monday gone, we met with her. She met with the union about Celebration Key. She's now aware, and she is having a meeting with Celebration Key, seeing if they can get some more jobs for us as well. She's working with us.”

Mr Curry said tourists seemingly stay within Celebration Key’s confines and no longer venture off-property on taxi rides, tours and excursions. He added that Celebration Key likely does not promote these activities to their guests either, wanting them to stay on property so Carnival and its vendors can retain all their spending.

Mr Curry said he has written a letter to Celebration Key requesting a taxi information booth be provided. He added that the private cruise port’s set-up does not allow for taxi drivers to attract sales.

“We recognised Celebration Key, the way they have it situated, you can't get in there to mingle with the guests, to sell the island, because Celebration Key, that's a private key,” he added.

Since Celebration Key’s opening, Mr Curry said taxi drivers have gone from transporting around 300 people a day to under 150 people a day.

“Since they came, we're just not getting the business like we was expecting,” Mr Curry said. “It looks like most of the people stay on the key. And because of that, it affects the harbour. The harbour doesn't have much traffic coming through there.

“One time ago, from the [Freeport] harbour we could move at least 300 people a day from the cruise ship port from the harbour. But now we can't move 150 from Celebration Key a day.

“We get more people coming in, but get a lot less traffic out of there. There's like sometimes 12,000 people, two boats a day in there, 12,000, 8,000 people a day, and taxi drivers can't get 200 out of that. They can't get 150,” Mr Curry added.

“We used to move at least - and our cars were loaded - we could have moved at least 30, sometimes 40 cars a day. And now you can't move seven cars hardly.

“That's where everybody used to get a piece of the pie. And now the tour operators crying as well, because they used to come up with bus loads. The tours dropped. Like they'd get 15 people, sometimes 18 a day from there. So everything dropped for everybody.”

John Fox, owner of Seashore Treasures said sales at the cruise port are “fabulous.” However, as an owner of a downtown Freeport business, he added there has been a “a significant drop off in sales”.

“Since the opening of Celebration Key, which is Carnival’s port, in general in the city, it seems to be a slowdown in business,” MrFox said. “And I can attest to that as well, because my wife and I also own a shop in the downtown area, and it's been a significant drop-off in sales.

“I know that this is the time of year when everybody expended a lot of funds, getting their kids back in school. So you do see a downturn in September, but it just seems to be exaggerated this year. And even traffic wise, on a Saturday morning you go downtown, it's not the same amount of traffic.

“Maybe a lot of people working at Carnival. They're open seven days a week, so maybe a lot of people don't have time to shop. I don't know. It's strange. It's hard to explain. But as a business owner in the downtown area, we've seen a significant drop off in sales.”