for port services; and 5) expenditures by cruise lines for the maintenance. However, accommodation
of large cruise ships into port requires a great deal of initial capital investment in infrastructure as well
as maintenance costs. As cruise ships continue to grow larger, further investment may be required.
Under these types of tourism scenarios with high infrastructure or environmental costs, rapid growth
of tourism may result in a stagnation of or even a decline in GDP (Gooroochurn and Blake (2005);
Nowak et al (2003) and Nowak and Sahli (2007)). Without significant foreign investment into this
infrastructure, it is questionable whether construction of large cruise ship terminals could pass a
benefit-cost analysis. According to CLIA (2007) the major economic impacts of the U.S cruise industry
during 2006 included a total passengers and crew expenditures that generated $35.7 billion in gross
output in the United States, a 10.2 percent increase over 2005. This, in turn, generated just under
348,000 jobs throughout the country paying a total of $14.7 billion in wages and salaries. These total
economic impacts affected virtually every industry in the United States.
Tourism is one of the main sectors for the development of the Central American and Caribbean
regions and therefore, it must be supported by both the public and private sectors (Espinal, 2005). In
2008 a record of 11 million passengers are forecasted to cruise in the Caribbean region. The cruise
visitors contributed to tourism with more than 21 million dollars. The industry is also booming in
Asia, Australia and Europe. The U.K., Germany and Italy are experiencing considerable growth in the
popularity of cruising and there is also significant development in Spain (but less in France (Klein
(2003)