PHILIPSBURG--Prime Minister Dr. Luc Mercelina said St Maarten will seize the opportunity created by the ongoing US tariff wars to attract tourists who are choosing to avoid the United States.
The strategy, he said, includes targeting alternative markets, “for example Canada”, as part of a broader effort to redirect international visitors to the island.
Speaking during last Wednesday’s Council of Ministers press briefing, Mercelina highlighted the global trade tensions’ wider implications on St. Maarten’s tourism sector. “We realise as a government that the challenge of the tariff war internationally is not only focusing only on, and that is what people often think, for example, the prices of goods in the country. It also has a reflection on our pillar of tourism,” he said.
He highlighted the need to refocus tourism strategies by identifying travellers who may be looking for destinations outside the United States.
“We have to also refocus to the direction – the [destinations] that we think those who are going to avoid the US, to see if we can attract them to come to St. Maarten, to the Caribbean,” he said. “And in this case a market that we have now that we are deliberating to see how we are going to actually execute that plan for refocusing is the Canadian market,” said Mercelina. “Because one, the Canadians are avoiding the US, but travelling is very in nowadays so, they are going to look for alternative destinations.”
While Canada was cited as a specific example, the intention is to attract any tourists who may now be looking to bypass the US in favour of Caribbean destinations like St. Maarten. “We are going to, of course, jump on that opportunity to actually redirect the tourists that are not coming from the States to get them from, for example, Canada,” he said.
