The Tourism ‘Crisis’ in San Andrés

[WAVES CRASHING]

[MUSIC]

TARIRO MZEZEWA, HOST: San Andrés is a small island in the Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Nicaragua.

LAURA LÓPEZ MARTÍNEZ: It’s one of those typical Caribbean islands that you can see in those touristic brochures.

TM: Laura López Martínez, a professor in Colombia, has studied the island and its culture. She says it’s known for its beautiful beaches, boasting white sand and crystal clear water.

LLM: The sea is very blue, it’s known as the “mar de los siete colores,” meaning the sea of the seven colors. So it’s very beautiful when you arrive by plane to see all the different changes.

[REGGAE MUSIC]

TM: San Andrés is technically part of Colombia. It’s been a domestic tourist destination for Colombians for decades.

[PEOPLE SPEAKING SPANISH INDISTINCTLY]

TM: The Raizal people are the longest-settled on San Andrés. They’ve lived there for at least 400 years. Raizal culture shares some similarities with other Caribbean islands.

LLM: You have a lot of reggae music in San Andrés, reggae culture, and they had a long history with Jamaica, for example.

TM: And just like other Caribbean islands, tourism is the main economic driver on San Andrés — particularly its big hotels and all-inclusive resorts.

[MUSIC]

TM: But a few years ago, a crisis struck the island’s tourism industry.

[NEWSCAST]
NEWSCASTER 1: Colombian low-cost carrier, Viva Air, has announced in the past day that it will suspend operations with immediate effect.
NEWSCASTER 2 [TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH]: The airline has grounded all of its planes.
NEWSCASTER 3: San Andrés launches an SOS, 40% of all travelers arrive by Viva Air.

TM: In 2023, Viva Air and Ultra Air — two budget airlines in Colombia — suddenly went bankrupt, cutting the number of flights to the island in half overnight. For the first time in years, tourism was on the decline. Hotels were reporting a 30% drop in occupancy, a devastating blow that would lead to closures and job losses.

Without a booming tourism industry, what would happen to the people of San Andrés? And how is the island doing now, two years later?

[THEME MUSIC]

TM: From WHYY, this is Peak Travel. I’m Tariro Mzezewa. Our show often looks at the problems that tourists can cause. In this episode, we’re visiting San Andrés to try and understand what happens when tourism slows down, and people aren’t descending on a location all at once.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

JIMENA LEDGARD, PRODUCER: I’m Jimena Ledgard, I’m a producer. I’m Peruvian, and I’m based in Lima, Perú.

TM: When producer Jimena Ledgard arrived in San Andrés in September 2024, she wasn’t sure what to expect. Would businesses be closed? Would people be out of work?

[MOTORCYCLES REVVING, REGGAE MUSIC]

TM: Jimena went to a classic beach bar on San Andrés. It seemed like the kind of tourist spot that would be struggling.

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

TM: But it turned out, tourists were still there — enjoying the tropical setting, sipping cocktails, and listening to reggae. As she walked around, Jimena saw some signs of distress on San Andrés.

JL: You do see some hotels that have been recently built that are not occupied, which I found was quite interesting. So I did see a big hotel, like a big oceanfront hotel for sale with a sign of, “Never been used, just finalized construction.”

[MUSIC]

TM: Before the airline crisis, tourism had been on a constant incline on San Andrés. The rate of visitors doubled in the last decade. By 2019, more than 1 million people flew to the island for their vacations, amounting to about 3,000 people per day.

The booming travel business fueled a lot of new construction — mostly hotels and resorts. But San Andrés is about 10 square miles, just a quarter of the size of the smallest island in Hawaii.

JL: So you can tell that they kind of like reached a tipping point where the offers started becoming higher than the demand.

TM: The airlines’ bankruptcy caused the number of people visiting San Andrés to drop. Hotel occupancy peaked at 75% in 2022. More recent estimates put occupancy as low as 25%.

JL: Numerically, there are less people coming into San Andrés. There used to be a certain number of flights, the airlines broke, there are less flights now, like, that is an actual fact.

TM: And it caused hotels to close, leaving people without work. After all, tourism makes up 90% of the island’s economy.

JL: I don’t want to minimize what it means for a lot of people in San Andrés, like, a lot of local people are feeling the impact of that. But I just think it’s a more nuanced story than what you would think just looking at the news reports.

TM: When she talked to the residents of San Andrés, Jimena realized that the airline crisis didn’t feel much like a crisis to them.

JOHN RODRIGUEZ [TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH]: So, at this time when low-cost airlines failed their business model in Colombia, we began to misunderstand this as if it were a crisis. But no, it’s not really a crisis, but it’s called a cleansing.

[MUSIC]

TM: John Rodriguez has lived on the island all his life. He’s a member of the Chamber of Commerce.

JR: San Andrés has historically always had peaks. There would be an oscillation of visitors.

TM: John says there used to be busy tourist seasons. But for the past 10 years, residents have been living in what has felt like a constant flow of people coming year-round. As for the hotels that closed down, Laura says locals didn’t really mourn the loss.

LLM: So that’s one thing that they don’t feel like they see the profit from the tourism because they don’t work on these hotels. Maybe as cleaners or things like that, but not in the manager positions or other important work in the hotels.

TM: Residents say that even though the number of visitors is down from before the airlines’ bankruptcy, they don’t mind — because that peak of 1 million visitors wasn’t sustainable.

Here’s Christian Bernárdez, a San Andrés resident and Airbnb owner.

CHRISTIAN BERNÁRDEZ [TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH]: The tourism skyrocketed, never seen before. And of course, that wasn’t going to last a lifetime. And after that, I think that’s why we feel a loss now.

TM: Among the locals Jimena spoke with was a man named Job Saas.

JOB SAAS: You have the, here, the cocoplums, also the cocoplum.
JL: Ahh!
JS: You know?

TM: Job is a Raizal farmer and reggae musician. He and Jimena are walking on his family’s farm, which is filled with native crops.

JL: No, I’ve never seen this.
JS: They’re a very nice fruit, the cocoplum.
JL: Can I eat it like this? Is it good?
JS: Yeah, yeah!

TM: Job says he’s worried about tourism’s impact on the island’s natural resources.

JS: Yeah, we stew it. So we stew it in syrup.
JL: Mhm!
JS: The sugarcane syrup.
JL: This is really nice.
JS: Cocoplum is a plant that is in danger of extinction, you know, because the places where this used to grow before, around the beaches, they have been cutting down, cutting down, building and building. So it’s not there anymore, you know?

TM: It isn’t just the cocoplums that are in danger.

JS: They only come and enjoy the nature, the beaches, the sea, and things like that. Yeah. And they go back and they leave a lot of problems on the way here. They use more water. They leave a lot of garbage, you know, that kind of tourism don’t work

[MUSIC]

TM: A 2024 analysis of San Andrés’ growing tourism industry found that the million visitors in 2019 put tremendous pressure on its infrastructure and resources.

The island is running out of clean drinking water, its landfill is almost at full capacity, and its sewer system has overflown multiple times, according to John from the Chamber of Commerce.

JR: There is no capacity to mobilize the amount of solid waste that is generated, especially in the tourism sector. And we also began to see the first phenomena of sewage discharges, because the capacity of hotel pipes began to collapse.

TM: Residents felt like the news reports about the 2023 airline crisis put the interests of the tourism industry above their own well-being.

KENT FRANCIS: Everybody began to scream and said, the business is not good. And we are in the crisis.

JL: So Kent is like quite a figure in San Andrés. He’s always been involved, you know, in some form of politics, organizing. He knows everyone. Everyone knows Kent.

TM: Kent Francis says the island’s tourism industry has been broken for a while. That the popular all-inclusive resorts didn’t show the best of San Andrés. Instead, they kept people in their hotels, away from residents and their culture.

KF: With this all-inclusive, a lot of people begin to be characterized, they come here to eat and drink as much as they could, because free, don’t pay for it. But they say it’s free. So you get bad food and you get bad drinks and you spend three days. Some people used to come for three days and they don’t even come out the hotel.

[MUSIC]

TM: John says the big hotels essentially all offer the same thing.

JR: Within the business circuit in Colombia, there is not a single operator that offers nature excursions in San Andrés, much less cultural ones. We are not going to stop being a sun and beach destination, but we can begin to diversify what we offer.

TM: They’re hoping the crisis is a chance to change that. Here’s Laura again.

LLM: Some of them see this as an opportunity. Basically, they don’t want those big hotels in the island. And they say, yes, we need tourism, but we want just, eco-friendly tourism, small places owned by local people.

TM: More on that after the break.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

TM: Welcome back to Peak Travel. I’m Tariro Mzezewa.

CLEOTILDE HENRY: Good morning. My name is Cleotilde Henry. I’m a Raizal from Saint Andrew. I work with tourism.

TM: When Jimena visited San Andrés, she stayed with a woman named Cleotilde Henry. She owns a posada nativa. It’s basically a homestay that’s run by native people. It has just 12 rooms that tourists can stay in.

JL: It’s inns that are run in local houses. People still need to live in the house like locals still need to live in the house. You need to be Raizal. So you need to have, like, ancestors that have belonged to the island.

[MUSIC]

TM: A posada nativa has to look a certain way, too.

JL: They’re made of wood. The insides of the rooms are never white, because they wear white on funerals. So white is considered the color of death. So they’re very colorful.

TM: Cleotilde doesn’t just run her own posada nativa. She’s the leader of the island’s Association of Posadas Nativas. In all, they offer 900 beds — compared to more than 8,000 total hotel beds.

Cleotilde might be biased, but she thinks tourists would benefit from staying with local families, instead of at the all-inclusives.

CH: Because you see, we have something that they don’t have. They have a big infrastructure. They have all the support from the central government. But we have culture, custom, tradition, and personality.

TM: Jimena experienced that personality firsthand.

JL: I don’t think I’ve met many people that are as hospitable and, I don’t know, curious and eager to chat and spend time together and get to know you and show you their food and houses and music and so on as people in San Andrés, like, it’s incredible. The moment you express, like, the tiniest little bit of curiosity, people are so excited to let you in.

[REGGAE MUSIC, PEOPLE TALKING]

TM: Cleotilde taught Jimena about San Andrés’ culture, which she found is more Caribbean than Colombian. She tried local foods like rondón, a Jamaican stew, and heard reggae music at Job’s farm.

JS: The farming and the fishing is the backbone of our culture.
JL: Yeah, yeah.
JS: And the music is, the music becomes our heart.

TM: Job hosts tourists on his farm for reggae concerts and events.

JS: You know, we create the music association. So we open up space here every Friday night to make Caribbean night, where the band can come and play and show the talent.

TM: Job loves the visitors. He sees their presence as an opportunity to show off his culture as a native islander.

JS: I like to offer reality. You know what we, what we grow, where we come from. You know, I think that is what the people should learn from our island when they come to the island, the lifestyle, you know.

[MUSIC]

TM: It’s not just the posadas nativas that offer a deeper connection to the island. Valentina Medina manages Hotel Aquamare on San Andrés. It’s a family business.

VALENTINA MEDINA [TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH]: We want to show the gastronomic part, the cultural part.

TM: Valentina says there’s so much more to experience on the island, beyond the sun and beach.

VM: San Andrés is an island that can change your perspective on what you think you’d find in the Caribbean. Not only is it a place where when you get off the plane, the color of the sea is stunning, but also when we talk about the culture, well look the hotel is next to a mosque and everyone comes up and says, “How is it possible that there’s a mosque in San Andrés?” But it’s like the history of where we came from, of everything that’s happened. For me, San Andrés is the most beautiful place that can exist.

TM: For example, her hotel takes tourists to a local event called Fair Tables. It’s like a streetside marketplace where Raizal women cook traditional food and bring dining tables from their homes outside to sell their cooking to tourists.

VM: So it depends on the hotel, what is it that they want to show. Well we, and I think we’re doing a good job at it, are making it so that the people that stay with us can have those experiences.

TM: Airbnb owner Christian agrees that the all-inclusives do a disservice.

CB: There are a lot of people who leave San Andrés and who don’t know what the rondón is. Who hasn’t tried a crab empanada. Or hasn’t gone, what do I tell you? Maybe who doesn’t know about mangroves? There are people who are, like, looking to interact more with culture. So yes, I would like to see more tourism, but of that kind.

TM: I asked Jimena about this when we talked about her trip.

TM: Judging from all the conversations we’ve had, it sounds like it was a pretty incredible trip. Do you think you would have had as great of experiences, as enriching of a trip, if you had stayed in one of the all-inclusives versus these other places that you stayed?

JL: No! [Laughter] Of course not! Like, I mean, you know the answer. The answer is of course not.

JL: So for example, waking up at Miss Cleotilde’s home and then hearing like the reggae coming off her living room and sitting with her to have breakfast and just, you know, having the food that she made herself out of her home and helping her pick up the dishes after like it’s joyous, you know, it’s just, it’s so joyous.

TM: I do have to tell you, when you were describing waking up and having breakfast and hearing the reggae, I was like, “Yes, that sounds so great.” And then you said, “Doing the dishes.” And I was like, “And you lost me.” [Laughter] I’m like, I thought, I thought we were on vacation. But also I have a close friend who, we both love to travel, and she always says, you know, “Some people vacation, and some people travel.” And there’s a real distinction we need to make there.

JL: I know a lot of people, like my mom is like this, you know, she’s like, “But I don’t want to be uncomfortable when I travel, but I want like, you know, I work a lot. I want to have, like, a travel where I feel pampered.” And I’m like, “Fair enough, but let’s call it for what it is, you know?” Like, I don’t know. We need different words to talk about this different activities, at least at the very least, you know, because traveling it’s supposed to, like, enrich you. And that can’t happen, you know, when it’s so controlled and when it’s so removed from the place you’re at.

[MUSIC]

JL: I understand that people don’t want to be uncomfortable when they travel, and I understand that, and I think that’s very reasonable. But there is a minimum level of uncertainty and uncomfortableness that is required to, you know, be open to the world. But also because when you’re at a hotel, the interactions with local people are always very vertical, you know, they’re serving you. Well when you’re traveling and going to local places and eating at local places, it feels more like an exchange because a lot of the time they own the place that they’re working at. They’ve worked there for years. You know, it’s very clear that people are aware that you are entering their spaces and their home. And I think that creates a much more fruitful interaction.

TM: So what was presented as a crisis in San Andrés was actually a much more nuanced situation. It turned out the collapse of the budget airlines also created an opportunity for residents.

The people we spoke with there mostly felt that the contraction in the tourism industry was a good thing. It relieved the pressure of overtourism. It drew visitors who wanted a cultural exchange, instead of just an all-inclusive hotel stay.

Not every Caribbean vacation has to be the same, and if you step outside the doors of the resort — and your comfort zone — you might find Reggae music, cocoplums, and a trip that benefits not just you, but also local residents.

TM: Next time on Peak Travel, we sit down with America’s favorite tour guide…

[MUSIC]

RICK STEVES: Hi, I’m Rick Steves, back with more of the best of Europe!

TM: …Travel writer and TV host Rick Steves. He’s been showing us how to get around Europe since the ‘70s, giving his tips and tricks for traveling on a budget.

RS: And I’m really not interested in keeping secrets, secrets. I’m like the whaler who screams, “Quick, harpoon it before it’s extinct.” It’s kind of crass, but my job is to find these places and to send my readers there.

TM: We’ll discuss his new book, his impact on travel media, and how leaving home can inspire the best in us.

RS: Fear is for people who don’t get out very much, the flip side of fear is understanding, and we gain understanding when we travel.

TM: That’s next time, on Peak Travel.

[MUSIC]

TM: This is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa.

Our executive producer is Tom Grahsler.

Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa. We had production help on this episode from Jimena Ledgard.

Our editor is Meg Driscoll. Original music by Catherine Anderson. Mixing and sound design by Emma Munger. Engineering by Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, and Diana Martinez. Our tile art was created by Nick Rogacki.

Special thanks to the voice actors who helped bring this episode to life: Diego Diment, Rodolfo Fernandez, and Yeni Alvarez.

Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeart Radio app — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Executive Producer: Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Additional Production: Jimena Ledgard
Editor: Meg Driscoll
Original Music: Catherine Anderson
Mixing and Sound Design: Emma Munger
Engineers: Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez
Tile Art: Nick Rogacki

Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.