TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Does the BVI Gov care about tourism at all?

Next week will be my 8th or 9th visit to the BVI. I always arrive by ferry and as most will agree it's not always pleasant going through customs. Years ago I applied for and received the BVI VIP Card which is the program to expedite you through customs. I soon found out they require a minimum number of visits to actually get any of the benefits. Oddly enough, the USA being their most frequent visitor country required more visits than Europeans. Since I've had enough visits, I've gone through the tedious process of gathering everyone's documents in my party, filling out all of their forms, contacting them to confirm the program is still active and then submitting everything well in advance of my trip. Last year, after doing all of this, they told me the program was only being offered for airport passengers due to Irma. I checked this year for Road Town customs arriving by ferry and they said yes. Tried to confirm 3 times over the past two weeks and nothing but silence.

Fishing License. Each year I apply, I get the license within two or three days. This year, nothing. Emailed and called 3 times. Spoke directly with Ken in the Fisheries Dept. and he said he'd get right back to me. Nothing. I really don't think any island government from the Bahamas down to Grenada are very gracious towards there bread and butter visitors but the BVI takes the cake!

Forget the VIP card: in my experience it’s worthless, and less so since Irma. It was a chatchke giveaway. We got the gold status. Twice I notified them of our arrival; twice nothing. Do not waste your time.

Fishing license I can’t help, but the BVI government was never a paradigm of efficiency, and it’s worse since Irma. To be fair, many of the government buildings have yet to be repaired, the landlines often don’t work, and working conditions are far from ideal. Maybe your charter company can help make it happen.

I agree it's not worth it any more. I'm traveling lighter this time and focusing more on relaxing than "doin stuff". Fishing sucks there anyway but it's still something I like to do that I don't get to do often. Especially living in Pittsburgh. I think at this point I'm more concerned that I emailed tons of personal identity information and credit card number off to no man's land. I don't really give them much slack for neglecting their duties because of post Irma conditions because they weren't so good at it BEFORE Irma!

Got my VIP Gold Status. Since I always ferry from STT it has been worthless. C&I in the BVI is the rudest I have encountered in the Caribbean. Nepotism rules. If it wasn’t so beautiful and the sailing so good I would never go back.

As I've said before we have always land based until this coming trip. Customs on Tortola is the reason we started going to Anegada. Customs there is so much friendlier. A few times we've landed on Anegada and had to check in the next morning. But always friendly never taken more than 5 minutes. The first couple of trips after the storms we had to check in on Tortola. A great reminder of why we go to Anegada. Our next trip we are chartering out of St Thomas. Not sure how we will check in to the BVI. Hopefully that will be handled by our captain. But as my fellow North Carolinian stated, if it wasn't so beautiful...........

I've only been to the BVIs once before, and my customs experience was definitely not pleasant! Hoping the upcoming trip is way less stressful!

It totally depends on who you get..I have had the most pleasant experiences and the most annoying. Yesterday we got to customs and we had put on our form that we had a framed , used, photograph and was a gift to us from the phtographer. We said it had hung on our wall in Ca and would now go on the wall at CRC. Without any explanation the stern, unsmiling "lady" officer told us we had to pay $17 duty..without seeing the pic or anything. When I questioned her her only answer, she kept repeating is " It still has value". We waited in line 10 mins with C on her walker to pay the $17. Welcome home! The good news we ran right into AC ( Arnold) outside and with a couple of cold beers were on our way home..Hoping the Gov checks TTOL to her these things because they are very bad way to give " a good first impression"..Mind you I had much worse in St Martin!

My boat is based with CYOA in St Thomas and we visit 5-5 times a year. After a couple lousy experiences at West End, I clear in exclusively at Great Harbour, JVD. Never any issues.

just cleared Great Harbour JVD on Saturday...no issues and agree West End isnt fun

DH and I live in a high tourist ( ski) area of New England. One of the lightning rods for " service industry" here right now is the Rite Aid-turning-Walgreens. At our age, we seem to be there a lot because our Rx drug refills aren't synchronized.

Our discussion this morning settled around the issue that employers cannot train "attitude". If employers want upbeat, friendly, helpful, empathetic and understanding employees, they have to hire specifically in favor of that " attitude" and reward that "attitude" institutionally as much as feasible. One pharmacy tech says " Hi David, how can we help you today? We saw you and your wife out to lunch the other day, it's good to see you two out and about." Another pharmacy tech looks at the scrip and sez, " Geeze, yeah, this again, probably be an hour or so, we all need to go on break or lunch."

Will Walgreens weed out the bad attitude?

It isn't necessarily that the employer doesn't care, it can be all about an employee pool that never gets paid enough, is frustrated and unwilling to feel " always onstage for others", and doesn't trust the employer not to change their own focus based on election, buy-out, or management change.

Humanity is not always easy.

In this case the employer doesn't care and the employee pool has a bad attitude based on a sense of entitlement that is ingrained in the culture. A few days after C&I started allowing non-residents in after Irma I came over from STT with a friend who owns two villas in West End. We are on a private boat filled with relief supplies. The C&I was operating out of a temp facility on the cruise ship pier. They held us up for 90 minutes because my friend didn't have a copy of his land deeds to show ownership of his property. The arrogance and attitude of the agents was off the chart. Mind you this is while a boat full of food, water, and generators sat idle at the dock. I even got the take your sunglasses off nonsense.

Here is a link to the only real concern of the BVI government.

https://youtu.be/uTmfwklFM-M

That is a classic George