In an age when most in the business of tourism are seeking to increase their income by selling authenticity to millennials and baby-boomers, it is perhaps puzzling that another rapidly growing industry segment now wants to deliver just the opposite.
Type the words ‘private islands’ into a search engine and it is immediately evident that this element of the industry reflects a new and rapidly growing phenomenon.
To be clear, this is not about elite destinations like Richard Branson’s Necker Island – sadly now all but destroyed by Hurricane Irma, about which more later ‒ or the exclusive and upscale small resorts that exist for example in the Grenadines, but about a new form of mass market Caribbean tourism that is being developed by the cruise companies.