Cruising in the Caribbean – completed text

1 themselves
2 built
3 body
4 site
5 overall
6 worth
7 underdeveloped
8 owned
9 enterprise

In the full text

On the one side of the debate are a series of interesting books by an author called Ross Klein who wrote books like "Cruise Ship Blues" and these books talk about how the industry plays islands off against each other to drive lower revenue for the island and more for themselves ¹. For example, he talks about how cruise ships do not restock supplies and the like on islands but only in their home ports for the main, and that way they keep the bulk of revenues also from tours and suchlike and that international firms own many of the chains in the new portside malls that have been built ².

Now on the other side of the argument are the materials from the main cruise body ³ called CLIA. Their site⁴ is cruising.org, and the organization talks about the money they spend on assisting with the infrastructure and the overall ⁵ benefits from the money passengers spend onshore. Either way it makes for really interesting reading and it is worth ⁶ hearing both points of view. (And in the show notes I have links to the books and the CLIA site …..)
One thing that you cannot help to note (= noting) on all of the islands is that they overall do seem fairly poor and underdeveloped ⁷. There are, of course, glitzy hotels but these again seem to be owned ⁸ and operated by the major chains and of course they are an important employer of locals but it is a pity that you do not see much more local enterprise ⁹ on the islands.