At the end of August, the Caymanian Compass reported that July saw the biggest influx of visitors to Cayman in six years. The numbers traditionally always trail off in August and September, with restaurants in particular this year reporting extremely slow business from mid August to date. Do we need to accept this season as just traditionally slow?

Compass journalist Joe Shooman that 144,674 people came to Cayman by cruise and air during July, a number that compared favourably to the same month every year since 2004. Cruise ship arrivals were at the highest since 2006 and air arrivals the fifth best in 10 years. Compare these promising figures to those in August and September and the story takes a different turn.

Raffaele dell’Oglio is the co-owner and manager of Edoardo’s restaurant and says he noticed a marked decline in business from mid-August after a buoyant early summer.

“The number of diners dropped off considerably from mid-August. We have had an extremely quiet period recently, even worse than last year’s traditionally slow period,” he confirms. “I wonder why we have to accept September and October as slow and what we could do collectively to encourage more visitors to Cayman at these times.”

Keith Griffin, owner of restaurant and wine bar Bacchus agrees: “We generally have a decent lunchtime service because we are based in town so we are not reliant on tourists and we don’t close up during the slow season because we usually enjoy a slightly larger slice of the pie because other restaurants do shut and we can attract more business. However, we have not seen anything near the volume of business that we saw during September last year. From mid-August onwards we’ve seen a marked decline in business.”

Griffin agrees that it has simply always been accepted that September and October are traditionally slow and there has never been a concerted effort to address the situation.

“I would love to introduce a similar scheme to Restaurant Week that we held at the end of August...whereby 21 local restaurants got together and offered a set four course meal for a fixed price. I was really surprised at how successful this idea was. Our bookings were up considerably during that week with locals as well as some tourists taking up this well-priced offer. It just goes to show that people are still willing to eat out if the price is right. I’d love to see this initiative extended to an entire month or perhaps repeated in September and October.”

Dell’Oglio agrees: “I think Restaurant Week was a great idea. I’d love to see it run from the beginning of the slow season, May through to October. If restaurants could get together and offer a summer special menu, I think it would definitely generate great business for us.”  

Some tourism-related businesses shut their doors during the traditionally slow season, but for larger organisations closing up shop is simply not an option.

Tailor-made service
“We’d love to shut down operations during September,” says Melissa Ladley, Public Relations director with The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman, “However it’s just not feasible because we have our Residences for which we still have to cater and operationally it would be impossible, for example we would still need to air condition our buildings.”

The Ritz-Carlton has been operational through five slow seasons in Cayman and has managed to build up a pattern of behaviour among guests, which allows them to tailor their service specifically to their needs.

“You need to be extra clever with your marketing during the slow season. People still travel during September and October and we have begun to understand the demographics of these individuals,” she explains. “They obviously don’t travel with children who are now all back to school for the new term. They tend to be singles, couples and older people looking for a quiet beach getaway, away from the crowds. They tend to be unafraid of hurricane season, residing mainly in South Florida. It’s hot here during the later part of the summer but even hotter in South Florida so it is to this demographic that we market.”

The Ritz-Carlton morphs into a boutique during the slow months, with just beachfront rooms available. Blue by Eric Ripert and Periwinkle restaurants are both closed during the slow season. They also push their residents’ package, which is open all year round for local residents but is especially attractive during September and October, priced at $239, which includes a beachfront room for two for one night as well as breakfast and the use of the beach cabana.

“We have sparkling wine with our Saturday breakfast, which is included in the price so local residents can really enjoy a wonderful stay here coupled with a fantastic breakfast and then a luxurious lounge on the beach with all the amenities that the beach cabana brings as well,” she says. “We also run our Silver Rain spa at full service during the slow season as our guests tend to make good use of these facilities at these times as they tend not to be travelling with children. We offer specials for residents at this time as well.”

Ladley says they also are piloting a brand new project in conjunction with Cayman Airways to encourage guests to use Cayman Airways and in return receive favourable rates.

“Because of various legal and logistical reasons we cannot create an actual package deal for holiday-makers that includes cheap airfare; however for the first time this year we are marketing our property alongside Cayman Airways so that we can offer guests a special customer rate code when booking their flights, which means favourable rates for their airfares,” she explains.

“At The Ritz-Carlton we are all big fans of Cayman Airways. We ensure that our reservation agents who are not based in Cayman are flown down to become familiar with the island and we always fly Cayman Airways. We feel that partner marketing such as this will be effective in bringing down more visitors to the island,” she adds.

Steve Broadbelt, managing director and co-owner of Ocean Frontiers and Compass Point Dive Resort says cutting prices and catering to a different demographic is the key to his resort’s October bookings running at 83 per cent. 

“This is mostly due to our ‘Green Short’ special that we have been running, which is offering some deeply discounted pricing,” he confirms.

Broadbelt says they find the demographics for the October traveller slightly different - mostly without children, ‘empty nesters’ and a few slightly younger couples in their late 30s.

“But we’d estimate similar average household income range. It’s just that the deal for them was too good to pass up. We are also seeing a lot of repeat visitors/customers for October,” he says.

However, Broadbelt warns that Ocean Frontiers caters to a niche market and has built a loyal following of divers over the last 15 years, thus their numbers do not represent what you will find elsewhere in Cayman during the fall season. 

The promise of change
Broadbelt reckons more could be done to attract off season visitors; however, he cautions: “We have to be careful to not throw good money after bad. No matter how much you invest in ‘off-season’ marketing efforts, only so many will come and those funds could yield a better return if directed towards other promotions at other times of year,” he comments. 

“An area that I believe is largely ignored is the potential partnerships with US airlines, which account for 70 per cent of the tourism airlift,” he adds. “Despite the best efforts of Cayman Airways, they do not have the connectivity to be able to perform and bring arrivals to Cayman as the larger US carriers can. I see promising signs of change at Cayman Airways and look forward to seeing their greater contribution to tourism in 2011.” 

Broadbelt says readers ought to consider how many empty seats can be seen on south bound Cayman Airways flights and to think beyond only the lost ticket revenue, but also the lost revenue to government in taxes (hotel, airport, duty on consumption, etc), which is estimated to be in the region of $250-300 per visitor, which, he says, is coincidentally the sale price of a Miami-Grand Cayman ticket.

“Air arrivals have never seen any significant boosts over the last 15 years and continue to fluctuate in the 250,000 -350,000 range, equating to approximately 1.5 per cent market share in the region, ranking Cayman in the 15-20th place, or the lower half of destination performance in the region. Cayman does not want to be in the top five or mass tourism destinations, but there are destinations in the 6-15th spots that we gain market share from and push our air arrivals beyond the 400,000 threshold. Continuing the same actions will bring the same results and with the rising cost of doing business and expanding government, it doesn’t take an economist to see the writing on the wall.”

Cost effective marketing
Trina Christian, executive director at the Cayman Islands Tourism Association, says initiatives have been put in place to encourage locals to participate more in tourism activities during the slow season but that CITA and the Department of Tourism have to be selective in their marketing of Cayman due to budget constraints.

She says that their Staycation promotion, held in conjunction with the Department of Tourism during the summer months, could have attracted more restaurants.

“The Staycation idea was to encourage local people to enjoy the great tourism services that we have here on island. Via our site we gave restaurants the opportunity to advertise special promotions, menus etc that would be of interest to locals. We received good representation by accommodations and hotels but the restaurant segment could have been stronger,” she acknowledges.

Christian says that the Executive Marketing Committee (comprised of individuals from both the CITA and the DOT) has a limited amount of funds to spend on advertising Cayman internationally, so it has to target when people want to travel the most to Cayman in order to get the highest return on their investment.

“We would love to be able to run TV and print ads all year round encouraging people to visit the Cayman Islands but this is not feasible with our limited resources. Having had extensive dialogue with stakeholders we feel it is better to encourage visitors to the island when they want to come, i.e. at high season and when they are willing to pay regular prices for goods and services, rather than try and encourage them to come when they don’t necessarily want to and when goods and services are at a reduced price,” she explains.

To beat the off-season doldrums there are, however, plans afoot to encourage visitors during the next few months, to get the island through to its peak season, a collaborative effort between Cayman Airways, the DoT and the CITA.