St. John’s Antigua- Mid-way into the island’s hallmark sailing event, Sailing Week, vendors at Nelson Dock Yard are bewailing the lack of foreign currency changing hands during the festive activity.
“They are not shopping for nothing at all,” one vendor who did not want her name mentioned said.
“This is the worst I have seen in the last four years. No sales, it’s very slow for the week,” the female vendor added.
Other vendors told OBSERVER Media that it’s not what they expected for Sailing Week despite their efforts to make their stalls more appealing to visitors.
Vendors of clothing items say they are grossing as little as EC$ 25 for a day’s work. Another female vendor who spoke with us on the same condition of anonymity said “years ago we would see a lot of people shopping.”
“Maybe after Sailing Week we will have some people to come and but not yet. Its getting worse and worse,” said one vendor who prefers to be identified as Sexy Sue.
Local taxi drivers also said they were doing less business, the worst in recent memory.
“It’s not been so good, sometimes you get something, sometimes you get nothing. Before there were a lot of taxi drivers around here doing business but now we are not getting any work,” the taxi operator said.
Alison Adams who is responsible for marketing of the event said she was not surprised by the reports coming from taxi drivers.
She said because the event is centralized this year, there is less of a need for taxi operators.
“Its just one of the sacrifices we had to make to ensure that the event was comfortable for sailors,” Adams said.
However, organizers are optimistic that things will pick up for vendors during the remaining days of the activity.
The exact dollars figure is not known but organizers believe Sailing Week contributes millions of dollars to the local economy for that period.
I think that there may be too many vendors competing against each other as well. Its fine when there are 4 or more cruise ships in a day like there had been the past few months, but things are slowing down again now. Sailing week sailors are not regular tourists who want shirts. They are locals and people who have been to Antigua before. They won’t be buying tourist shirts.
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i arrived to the Marley concert and needed some cash so i lined up at the one-and-only bank machine in bottom end of the country. a line-up of frustrated people shook their heads and grumbled. surprise surprise the bank machine did not work. i mentioned it is the ONLY bank machine in all of english harbour and basically the bottom half of the country.
judging by the number of people in the line-up not getting money, thousands of cash dollars were not spent that night because people didn’t have it in their pockets to spend.
organizations accommodate events with extra portable washrooms. seems to me, that cash dispensing machines could be something else that need to be considered.
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