Tourism

How large was the population of Bonaire, Saba, and St Eustatius on 1 January 2017? How did the economy of each island develop in 2015? What were the results of the labour force survey which was held in 2016?

This and more new statistical information is presented here in the latest edition of Trends in the Caribbean Netherlands. The book provides updated as well as new and additional information, covering many aspects of life in the Caribbean part of the Netherlands as of 2017.

Growing demand from the Dutch central government has resulted in the compilation of new statistics and an increase in available data. The edition before you includes data on all three islands with topics including consumer prices, firefighting, gross domestic product, inbound tourism by air, international trade, nature and environment and value added by tourism in the GDP of Bonaire.

This publication gives an impression of the diversity in facts and figures provided by Statistics Netherlands. The information can also easily be accessed through our press releases, available on our website.

As of 10 October 2010, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) is responsible for the collection and publication of statistical data on the three islands of the Caribbean Netherlands: Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius. An annual, comprehensive overview of the latest figures and developments is presented in this compact and colourful booklet, Trends in the Caribbean Netherlands. Aside from a wide range of recent data, it provides information on developments in many areas, from education to energy, from population to prices and from trade to tourism.

In addition to the regular statistical programme, Statistics Netherlands now also provides statistics for externally financed projects on national accounts, income statistics and labour and wage
statistics.

All our statistics can be found in our online database, StatLine (cbs.nl/statline). News and information can also be accessed through our press releases, published daily on our website
(www.cbs.nl). News on the Caribbean Netherlands is featured in a special dossier on this site.

User fees can contribute to the financial sus- tainability of marine protected areas (MPAs), yet they must be acceptable to users. We explore changes in the fee system and management of Bonaire National Marine Park (BNMP) from the perspective of users. Responses from 393 tourists indicated that 90% were satisfied with park conditions and considered current user fees reasonable. However, only 47% of divers and 40% of non-divers were prepared to pay more. Diver willingness-to-pay (WTP) appears to have decreased since 1991, but this difference could be due in part to methodological differences between studies. Although current fees are close to diver maximum stated WTP, revenues could potentially be increased by improving the current fee system in ways that users deem acceptable. This potential surplus highlights the value of understanding user perceptions toward MPA fees and management. 

Coral reefs worldwide are attracting increasing numbers of scuba divers, leading to growing concern about damage. There is now a need to manage diver behaviour closely, especially as many dive companies offer unlimited, unsupervised day and night diving from shore. We observed 353 divers in St. Lucia and noted all their contacts with the reef during entire dives to quantify rates of damage and seek ways of reducing it. Divers using a camera caused significantly more contacts with the reef than did those without cameras (mean 0.4 versus 0.1 contacts min-1), as did shore versus boat dives (mean 0.5 versus 0.2 contacts min-1) and night versus day dives (mean 1.0 versus 0.4 contacts min-1). We tested the effect of a one-sentence inclusion in a regular dive briefing given by local staff that asked divers to avoid touching the reef. We also examined the effect of dive leader intervention on rates of diver contact with the reef. Briefing alone had no effect on diver contact rates, or on the probability of a diver breaking living substrate. However, dive leader intervention when a diver was seen to touch the reef reduced mean contact rates from 0.3 to 0.1 contacts min-1 for both shore and boat dives, and from 0.2 to 0.1 contacts min-1 for boat dives. Given that briefings alone are insufficient to reduce diver damage, we suggest that divers need close supervision, and that dive leaders must manage diver behaviour in situ.