I can’t really believe they went into Parliament to waste time debating a change in legislation so that cruise liners in the Bridgetown Port could open their casinos over a certain number of hours to let their passengers gamble.
That was and is bare foolishness in my book because, apart from the few extra dollars Barbados Port Inc. will earn in charges for the extra time spent in the harbour, few other people will benefit, not even the operators of duty free shops and craft carts in the Cruise Terminal.
For despite being unable to open their casinos, some liners periodically remain in port long after others have departed at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. and over the years I have seen various attempts to keep passengers ashore with top-class entertainment fail time and time again.
The sole and simple reason is that the passengers pay their money for an all-inclusive cruise and few are interested in foregoing the overabundance of free foods of every description, free liquors, free entertainment and all the other free attractions and enticements on board for a night of the unknown on the town in Barbados.
So forget all this long talk about letting ships open casinos for the benefit of people who will only spend part of just one night in Barbados – but do return to Parliament, and if you must change the legislation as should have been done long ago, change it to benefit the real tourists.
I am talking about the hundreds of thousands who provide us with hundreds of millions in foreign exchange by spending one, two and three weeks in hotels, and the filthy rich who spend two and three months at a time in West Coast villas.
Make it happen so that we can milk them of a few hundred million more in Barbadian-operated and strategically located casinos in popular tourist areas like Holetown, St Lawrence Gap, The Crane and Oistins.
And don’t get offset by the old talk that casinos will turn Barbados into an island of gamblers. Barbados is already and for a long time has been an island of gamblers.
Slot machines? We have them by the hundreds in arcades, hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, bars, rum shops, everywhere.
Poker? We have it at every level of society – from poor boys playing seven-card stud and draw poker under a tree on a makeshift table and “coming up” with a dollar, all the way up to millionaires in air-conditioned, fully equipped rooms holding hands of Texas hold’em, Omaha Hi/Lo and stud around real poker tables with real poker chips and stakes anywhere from $1 000 to $10 000.
Bingo? Churches, schools, service clubs.
Lotto games?Like that country and western classic Once A Day, Every Day, All Day Long, teenagers to centenarians play Mega6, Super Lotto, Super Seven, Pic 3, Pick 4, Double Draw, and endless instant scratch games.
I don’t even have space to talk about all the other gambling in Barbados, like blackjack, dice, horse racing, dogfights, cockfights, because I am out of space. But wheel and come again, and bring casinos in the interest of raising our frail tourism product.
• Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm.