Tour Guides Protest Fee Increase at Hol Chan Marine Reserve

Tonight, several tour guides are up in arms over an increase in park fees at the Hol Chan Marine Reserve that takes effect on Thursday. Over the weekend, the NGO, which co-manages the reserve, announced the new fee would be fifteen US dollars per person for the reserve’s four zones, a five-dollar increase. The organization does not state a reason for the uptick, but several tour operators say it is unjustified.  Love News spoke with Norman Gill, a Caye-Caulker-based tour guide, who believes the increase will be detrimental to small tour operators, who already have a lot of market pressure from larger tour companies.

Norman Gill, Tour Guide: “For me as a small business owner I’m not like the bigger companies that work with the hotels. We work with more walk in customers and then also based in Caye Caulker most of the background of the travelers on Caye Caulker are European backpacker style travelers. In order for me to be able to afford this $15 or even the $20 that they want to do the 100% increase it will affect me a lot and also the other smaller business operators that do walk ins because then for us to get an extra $20 to cover the park fee it’s gonna be ridiculous on raising our tour the people might not want to book with us. Instead of booking one or two tours on the island people would just be settling for one tour because then like for a full day snorkeling that I do I charge $125 US an then now if I should add on that because then what a people were implying from the bigger companies because they work with the big hotels they’re like “oh just charge it on the tourist.” But how can we charge it on a tourist that is traveling for three to six months ? As much as we would want to make that business it would affect them because  then they’re already on a budget. It’s just ridiculous for us small business owners. Because we already have to fight with the people that book big tours and then if we have to raise our price we won’t get the numbers up. So eventually all that is doing that, that s going in the favor of the bigger companies to operate and box out the small operators.”

Several stakeholders claim there was a lack of consultation and called for the organization to consider the current economic pressures brought on by inflation. Tour operators, George Jones and Desmond Tillett, spoke about why they feel the new price will drive away customers.

Desmond Tillett, Tour Guide: “The tourists are already complaining about the prices that we give and if they complain that it’s a little bit too expensive for their budget. So with that increase of that price entrance it’s going to affect us a little bit indeed. To be honest if they’re already having problems to pay $10 Belize dollars imagine for them to be having to pay $30 Belize dollars now. It will damage the area. It was good at $10 Belize dollars per person so I don’t know why they want to put that to $20 more on top of that for the people to try pay that. That’s ridiculous. Like I said if so be the case if they put that out guaranteed the tourism industry when it comes to the snorkeling at the Hol Chan it will drop. The money is getting smaller, everything is raising and when you take home you’re taking home about 15% of what you make. You are not taking home 50%. Because when you’ve already paid tax through tourist village, tax through the site where you have to pay per person, and not only that you have the tubes, you have light, everything that you have to use. So when you take it out if you get like $50 US per person if you are getting $45 or $50 per person and $15 comes out of there, if you have a tour guide you are paying a guide like $150 like tour guide taking out people in 15 seater vans is like $150 then you have the gasoline that is high that’s a next $150  then you have to pay the $15 per person and if you take it out like I take it out I gotta pay $5 US for every person I take out of tourism village. So imagine how hard it will come on us.”

Our newsroom contacted Hol Chan for comment; however, we were told the executive director was unavailable until mid-August. The NGO did note that tours booked before August 1 will be charged the old price.