Realty Tour for Cruise Ship Passengers
Are you interested in moving to Roatan? Do you want a beautiful beachfront holiday home without the costs involved in buying in the Caymans and other Caribbean islands? Want to invest in land for your future retirement where the cost of living is affordable, and the lifestyle is enjoyable? I am happy to create a realty Roatan tour for cruise shippers to show you land and homes that you might have seen online. If you are still in the early stages of looking, I can give you a general tour of the island and the different areas that people choose to live in and why.
Cruise Lines and Roatan
Roatan has two ports that can serve over a million visitors a year. Mahogany Bay alone can have 8,000 passengers disembarking in one day. The original port is located in Coxen Hole, which is the largest town on the island but is not a place I would recommend you use to judge the beauty of the island. It serves ships primarily from Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Lines. It can currently accommodate three ships on the same day, and more details can be found on the Port of Roatan website. The other, Mahogany Bay, which opened in 2009, is located halfway up the island in the middle of nowhere, so they built a beach and a large shopping area so people can get off the boat and never actually visit Roatan at all. It is owned and operated by Carnival Cruise Lines and serves ships from Carnival and their affiliated lines.
Cruise ships are very contentious in Roatan. On one hand, they bring in a lot of visitors who go on tours, and those tours employ a lot of people. On the other hand, it is a huge influx of people that the island does not have the resources to cope with so many visitors. As most passengers stick to the tours, they do not spend as much money as people who are on vacation here. Regardless, people come some days in their thousands. The cruise lines do their best to keep you close to the ship, even to the point of making their beach. Around the port, they have interests in or own all the businesses and, of course, profit from all that is spent. Leaving the island only the wages of those that work within the confines of the port.
Much better for the island are those that come here for a week or more at a time. They pay for hotel rooms, food, tours, drinks, shows, and many other things that support the local economy. Some brave souls book tours or grab a taxi and explore the island for themselves. There is much to see, and the island has many beautiful spots. Several good friend tours that will take you through mangroves, visiting sloths, hanging out in local bars, or just lazing on the many beaches. If you want to be put in contact with one of these tour companies, send me a message, and I will be happy to send you some ideas. You can find more details about the ports on the IQCruising website. Current schedules for Mahogany Bay can be found here, and for the Port of Roatan here.
Your personalized realty tour with a fully licensed realtor!
A tour for people only visiting the island by cruise ship has quite a few challenges. You have a small window of time. You sometimes arrive very early, and that is not good for seeing homes. You often want to see more than is possible in one day. It is not always possible to see the properties you want on the day the ship docks. Sometimes the ship, for one reason or another, does not dock as it passes by. We have to find each other in the craziness that is thousands of people getting off the ship together.
The biggest issue is that you only have that small time window, on that particular day, to see what you want. That means we need to carefully plan well ahead of where we are going and what we want to see. It is why I require that we have at least two zoomvideo conference meetings before you take the cruise to agree to the tour. This is so I can understand what your underlying goals are and make sure you have the most successful tour possible.
Do your initial searching before you leave on your cruise. Create your own portal and plan with your limited time in mind.