I asked some friends to answer three questions and I will publish their responses. This one was written by Tony Van Veen.
Do you think Aruba is starting to suffer or has been suffering from overtourism.
Yes, it has been for at least a decade.
In the event that you find it is, how does it affect you in your everyday life? Where do you feel it?
- Overcrowding on beaches and other nature sites on the north coast (Conchi, Bushiribana, etc.). Tourists have overrun those areas, pushing locals off the big beaches to smaller ones. First it was Palm Beach. Then Baby Beach and Arashi. Then smaller, less discovered areas like Tres Trapi and Mangel Halto. Now even Eagle Beach (which is huge) is getting so full with umbrellas, palapas, and water sports, that it’s crowding out locals. I can’t imagine how it’s going to be when the new Iberostar is open. What do locals have left?
- Excessive nuisance from tourist activities. Crowded, noisy party boats buoyed in front of the coastline in Malmok. Noisy party buses driving around the island blasting music. And especially the UTV/ATV tours and rentals, which are not only destructive to nature, but also make so much noise and kick up so much dust that they are leading homeowners who live downwind from them to sell their homes. Not to mention tour guides routinely blocking traffic on roundabouts and intersections to let their tours go through.
- Strain on infrastructure. Most obvious is the struggling RWZI water processing plant in Bubali whose smell is a huge nuisance downwind, and which during rainy season overflows unprocessed sewage into the Bubaliplas, out of sewer lines along the road by Eagle beach, and in the ocean. But the overtourism has also led to strain on the electrical grid, with fairly regular outages recently, traffic jams on the roads, and pressure on the school system from the population growth required by the continually expanding hotels.
- I don’t know if anyone has actually said it, but Aruba is facing a housing crisis. There are so many foreigners who have bought – and are buying – homes on the island that it has driven up real estate prices so much that the vast majority of locals can’t afford to buy a home. This process is exacerbated by enterprising locals buying up homes to convert them into AirBnBs. Aruba’s real estate market has become a market for tourists and expats. Locals need to rely on getting a piece of erfpacht terrain and building… and the island is running out of plots of land to hand out.
Bring up one or two practical suggestions what we as an Island can do, you can keep it short or long.
Some months ago the government estimated that Aruba would need 9000 workers for all the new hotel rooms coming onstream. That is a disaster waiting to happen, because that probably means 25000 more residents and much greater strain on Aruba’s infrastructure – not to mention all the extra tourists here everyday running their air conditioning, driving on the roads, crowding the beaches, and pooping and showering and creating waste water that needs to be processed. The hotels are already being built – can’t tear them down. The best way to ease this burden is as follows:
- Develop a rational amnesty process for illegal residents on the island. There are thousands of them. Many of them are working menial jobs under the table. Legalize them and let them start paying taxes and AZV and applying for hotel jobs. We’ll need to import less workers while providing the people already here illegally with an opportunity for a better life. After all, we’re going to need more workers, like it or not!
- Cancel all agreed upon hotel contracts that have not broken ground yet. Difficult to do and expensive, involving lawyers and payouts to the hotel companies that have signed agreements, but we have done it before, in the late 80’s/early 90s when the government negotiated some planned projects out of existence. At this point, borrowing money to NOT develop the island is more beneficial to the island and our nature and residents than borrowing to develop MORE.
- Of course, put a permanent moratorium on further hotel development and expansion. No exemption for boutique hotels or other kinds of lodging. We don’t need more hotel rooms!
- Tax destructive tourist activities out of existence. Everyone knows that there is no political will to flat-out ban UTV tours. So let’s implement a steep “environmental impact” fee of $100 per person per UTV/ATV tour (and $100 per day for a UTV/ATV rental) and tax those tours and rentals down to a minimum number that is tolerable and sustainable. Charge a lesser fee for other nuisance activities – $50/person for jeep tours and jetski rentals, $20/person for boat and party bus excursions, banana boat rides and parasailing, etc. And put those fees to use to preserve and protect natural areas. What about the people who lose their jobs because their tour companies are shrinking? The hotels still being built will gladly employ them! Or maybe a few enterprising souls will come up with more sustainable ways to entertain our visitors, like hiking and e-bike tours.
- Regulate, monitor, and tax AirBnBs. The government is trying. Try harder. It’s not hard to figure out who is renting properties. Put in place a licensing and permitting process for owners of AirBnB properties to get permission to run a rental operation. Charge AirBnB owners a fee for this process which pays for the inspections. And charge huge fines to both tourists and AirBnB owners who rent unlicensed properties, like they implemented in NYC late last year because the growth of AirBnB units there (like in Aruba) were contributing to a housing shortage.
I’m sure there’s plenty more that I haven’t thought of, but this is a start.
Good luck squeezing all the suggestions you get into one column. You should compile them into a big document and deliver it to Evelyn and Ursell…
