The January/February Traveler reports on various ways to visit the Caribbean, but one of the most popular—by cruise ship—raises questions. Big ships can flood an island with hundreds of visitors, sometimes overcrowding small attractions. Yet cruise passengers spend only limited amounts in these often-impoverished islands, mainly on taxi rides and shops, but nothing on hotels and little on dining. The average ship-borne tourist leaves less than a third of what an overnight visitor contributes to an island economy. Faced with the uncertainty of island supplies, cruise line operators don’t buy much locally either.

That’s why some islands have imposed a passenger tax on large cruise ships—seven dollars a head, for example, in the British Virgins—but when they do, some cruise lines threaten a boycott, which islanders can ill afford. (The same drama incidentally, plays out on Alaska’s Inside Passage from time to time.)

This month, the Tourism Forum asks:
Should cruise lines accept a head tax per island, even if you, the passenger, end up paying for it?

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