I read this article in the Cayman Net News, but it applies equally to our situation.
In over fourteen years of visiting the Cayman Islands as a tourist, my exposure to local sports was limited to an occasional glimpse of cricket being played at the Smith Road Oval as I travelled to and from the airport.
It was only when Cayman Net News recruited me as a sports writer that I discovered the wealth of sporting talent the Islands had kept hidden from me all these years.
I am sure my experience is typical, almost daily I speak to both visitors and people living here who have no idea sport is such an important part of life in this country.
Follow up:
Looking at this globally, it seems that both the tourist organisations and the sports associations are missing out on a golden opportunity to boost tourism here.
According to a report published last year, sport tourism is a multi-billion dollar business, one of the fastest growing areas of the $4.5 trillion global travel and tourism industry.
By 2011, travel and tourism is expected to be more than 10 percent of the global gross domestic product.
The economies of cities, regions and even countries around the world are increasingly reliant on the visiting golfer and skier or the travelling football, rugby or cricket supporter. In some countries, sport can account for as much as 25 percent of all tourism receipts.
The report identifies sport tourists as people who are passionate, high-spending, enjoy new sporting experiences and often stimulate other tourism. It concludes that their direct benefit to a destination is cash and their indirect benefit can be years of follow-on tourists.
The report says the bottom line is that sport tourism is now a tool to make and achieve many things, it earns money, it can create thousands of new jobs and may even help change cultural perceptions such as in the Middle East and South Africa.
This is a message the Cayman Islands should already be well aware of. According to official figures, 70 percent of people landing at Owen Roberts Airport are scuba divers.
However, when I cover sports here there is one unmistakeable trend - I spend a lot of time reporting on local teams travelling to compete, or going to train, overseas and local athletes competing abroad but very rarely do I get the chance to write about visiting teams, athletes and fans.
Talking to those involved in sports in Cayman the reason for this soon becomes clear, lack of proper facilities.
Accepting that Hurricane Ivan devastated Grand Cayman a scant two years ago and recovery was further disrupted by Hurricane Wilma last year, a lot of the information I get suggests that the problems pre-date the hurricanes.
It is also worth remembering that other islands in the region that also suffered severe hurricane damage in recent years have not been prevented from staging international events.
If the stories I hear are accurate, it seems the Cayman Islands has a talent for creating potentially world-class facilities like the Truman Bodden Stadium, then not following up that investment with the money needed to provide proper maintenance. Worse, it seems the powers that be are happy to spend large amounts of money on what many regard as non-essential outgoings, but fail to respond to requests for investments which, would generate sports tourism.
Over CI$1 million is currently being spent on the Pavilion at the Jimmy Powell Oval. It is too late to debate whether or not the money should have been spent now, but one thing I do know is that money is unlikely to create one single dollar from sports tourism in the foreseeable future.
Looking at the recent Stanford 20/20 series, the reasons for that are obvious, the ground needs not just better facilities but considerable private sector investment to create tourist revenue.
With the replacement for the Smith Road Oval in the offing, even if it is being described by some as, "the best kept secret on the Island", maybe the money should have held over and put into the new ground. If the government really has found a site in a major development on the Island for a new cricket facility, is it not about time they sat down with both the cricket experts on the Island and private investors to ensure that the new facility will attract international competitions?
In three sports, basketball, netball and volleyball, one simple requirement is preventing the country from staging international competitions. The rules require that the courts for all three activities must be covered. Even if government money is not available to cover and develop an existing venue, it seems strange to me that a tiny fraction of the resources currently being employed to develop somewhere like Camana Bay cannot be donated by the developers to complete the work.
Sports tourism is here to stay and the sooner the Cayman Islands can get their share of the proceeds the better.
The problem is that the longer those involved drag their heels and fail to respond to the challenge, the further ahead other Islands in the region will get and the smaller the potential share of the pot will be. As any sports person knows, once you get behind it is very, very hard to make up the ground again.
Source: Cayman Net News
