#TurksandCaicos – December 11, 2020 – February Carnival Cruise Line has four cruises scheduled for an early February return to Grand Turk, and it could mean 13,874 visitors over four days as all of the voyages are fully booked.
It
has been nine months since a cruise ship berthed at the Grand Turk Cruise
Center; the impact of Covid-19 flat lined economic activity on the island which
welcomes over one million cruise visitors each year.
Carnival’s
schedule reveals the plan is to set sail with its Carnival Elation out of Port
Canaveral with 2,040 passengers in a fully booked cruise. Elation takes off on the four or five night
cruise on February 1 and on the itinerary are Freeport and Nassau in The
Bahamas; Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic and Grand Turk.
A shell of its former self. This pool at Margarita Ville at the Grand Turk Cruise Centre would have been buzzing with guests. Today, it is desolate due to the No Sail Order which grounded the cruise industry as a result of the infectious, killer Covid-19 pandemic
Carnival
Sunrise is also fully booked with just under 3,000 passengers. It leaves the Port of Miami on February 4
with stops into Cozumel, Mexico; Key West, Florida; Amber Cove, Dominican
Republic; Grand Cayman; Ocho Rios, Jamaica and Nassau and Half Moon Cay in The
Bahamas. Grand Turk is the third stop on the five-night cruise.
The
cruise liner, Mardi Gras is the longest of the cruises which includes Grand
Turk on its itinerary. The seven-night trip
also has the most passengers, 100 percent booked with 5,200 people on
board. Grand Turk appears to be the
first stop on the sailing which leaves Port Canaveral on February 6.
The
final cruise for the capital island of the Turks and Caicos, according to the
media report featuring early February sailings for Carnival is on February 7.
Carnival Breeze sails from Port Canaveral on a seven-night voyage at capacity,
which is 3,650 on the liner.
Advertisement
Grand
Turk, Nassau and Amber Cove are the ports listed for the February 7 cruise.
Carnival
Cruise Line, as have other cruise companies is being made to comply with
stringent standards for public health protocols given the horror stories of
rampant infection, passengers and crew left medically destitute, denial of
dockings by Covid-weary countries and the death toll as the pandemic
mercilessly marred their industry.
The
US Centers for Disease Control unveiled its ‘Framework for Conditional Sailing’
on October 30 and it was beyond expectation.
Cruise
companies are now scurrying to meet the standards which require on board
laboratories, improved screening strategies of crew members and the CDC requires
each cruise company to run a test cruise in order to be certified as fit to set
sail from North America.
The CDC issued a No Sail Order on March 14, 2020.
The last cruise ship to dock in Grand Turk was the Carnival Magic on March 6. It was a contentious finale after TCI Health Officials denied passengers’ disembarkation due to in-country rules related to the dreaded Covid-19 contagion.
Originally published in the Magnate; our brand new E-newspaper. Want it every morning? Contact Deandrea Hamilton: 649-231-9261. We are the News Leader.
Magnetic Media is a Telly Award winning multi-media company specializing in creating compelling and socially uplifting TV and Radio broadcast programming as a means for advertising and public relations exposure for its clients.
#TurksandCaicos, March 17, 2023 – Revenue from the Turks and Caicos’ Financial Services Sector will more than double in the next few years, if E Jay Saunders, Deputy Premier and Finance Minister gets his way. It ‘s one of the reasons the country is investing so much capital into getting off of the EU blacklist and becoming a secure trustworthy financial destination.
“The FSC’s revenues for 2020/21 was $10.5M— the figures for 2021/22, would be about similar,” he said. He further explained that $10.5 million from the FSC represented about 2.6 percent of the country’s 408.5-million-dollar revenue. Though it increased to $14 million in the 2021/22 financial year, finance is still a small fry compared to tourism or even stamp duties but that will change, says Saunders.
“My revenue goal for the Government by the year 2029 [or] the election after the next election – is $500M. By that time, I want the financial sector (FSC) revenues to represent at least 5% ($25M). So that’s my goal for the financial sector by 2029.”
This goal, should it be met, would increase the Government’s revenue by 100 million dollars, a significant increase in spending power for local upgrades and improvements for Turks and Caicos residents and visitors.
Saunders says it’s time for the TCI to diversify its sources of revenue to make sure that what happened in the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw residents out of a job for months, will not happen again. Tourism now makes up around 80 percent of the country’s GDP. The Minister of Finance wants to push that down to 60 or even 50 percent.
#TurksandCaicos, March 17, 2023 – Musicians from the New World Symphony will be in the Turks and Caicos in concert next month and residents are invited to attend in support of the future of Ashley’s Learning Center.
A fairly young orchestral academy based in Miami, the New World Symphony was launched in the 1980s by 1987, Michael Tilson Thomas and Ted Arison,Carnival Cruises founder. From the 1500 applicants who vie for a spot each year, the symphony accepts around 35 music graduates annually for training fellowships.
A select few of those graduates will be in country on April 8th headlining at the Ashley’s Learning Center concert ‘We’re all in this together’. The concert which also feature local artistes will be held at Brayton Hall on Venetian Road from 6 pm to 8:30 pm
Tickets are available ON ISLEHELP $75 PER GENERAL SEAT $125 PER PREMIUM SEAT $195 PER GALLERY SEAT – with /FREFRESHMENTS.
For TICKET RESERVATIONs you can call: 649-341-2304 or email EVENTS@ASHLEYSLEARNINGCENTER.ORG
#TurksandCaicos, March 17, 2023 – As the country moves toward new fiber optic connectivity, bridging the digital divide could be a game changer for healthcare and other family-friendly services in the TCI.
The power of universal digital connectivity across countries was one of the recurring themes when the United Nations in partnership with the Network of Afro Caribbean Women and the Diaspora recently explored how technology, innovation and education are being used to address women’s health issues.
The session aimed to highlight success stories and explore how those processes can be replicated to help women and girls globally including in The Turks and Caicos.
The UN explained that despite holding a 70 percent majority in healthcare jobs, women are poorly represented in leadership roles and subject to systemic gender inequalities that can make receiving healthcare challenging.
As delegates from Chile and Rwanda, who were also partners in the session, shared the upgrades to their countries’ systems that had significantly improved the level of care available to their women, digital connectivity was a deciding factor.
In Rwanda the health ministries have begun to use drones to deliver medicine, SMS messages to alert about health threats and a completely digitized health care that eliminates paper documents for pregnant women and makes records accessible to any doctor, immediately.
Rwandan delegate, Rose Rwabuhihi shared tips that countries should keep in mind when trying to implement new processes to benefit women and the wider community.
Partnership and sustainability are key factors to successful programs. She urged governments not to give up on projects or allow their partners to give up on them halfway.
Education campaigns to introduce residents to the technology: “We need to build skills and deepen the knowledge so they can use the innovations that have been put in place especially in rural areas.
Poor connectivity and technological issues have plagued the TCI for years especially in the islands outside of Providenciales. Government has substantially acknowledged this disparity in communications services and is investing in a new undersea cable to augment services in the Turks and Caicos.
The UNs perspectives can now ignite a fire for even more family friendly, digital services.
In fact,Senator Yasna Provoste Campillay, the Chilean Delegate explained how connectivity and videoconferencing had been used to reach the county’s women in the most rural of areas. Chile is a long country, its landmass spread lengthwise creating unique communication challenges. While healthcare in Chile is separated by length the Turks and Caicos islands are disconnected by the ocean and solutions that prove useful for the South American country could well be worth implementing locally.