Our tourism policy is based on a deliberate choice: quality instead of quantity. Bonaire is too small for mass tourism. We also depend on things we cannot control, especially airlines based in other countries, so chasing visitor numbers without a limit would be risky.
We allow tourism to grow, but only up to a ceiling of one hundred thousand visitors per year. This is not because we dislike tourists. It is a practical calculation of how much the island can absorb.
Tourism affects everything: the economy, nature and the wider environment. It has created jobs and entirely new industries, while some older activities have disappeared.
Not every loss can be blamed on visitors. A local rice-peeling mill, for example, closed because of unfavourable international trade agreements, not because of tourism.
Tourism puts pressure on our environment, but it also provides money that can help us respond—and the whole island benefits from that.
Tourism income supports rubbish collection, street-sweeping vehicles and a programme intended to prevent litter before it accumulates.
Public campaigns have made residents more aware of environmental responsibility. Tourism helped create the funding and urgency for that work, although visitors are certainly not the only source of environmental pressure.
Polluted seawater and global warming affect Bonaire too. The lack of a proper water-treatment system and sufficient sewers remains one of the government’s central concerns.
We encourage hotels to accept both environmental and social responsibility. One step is asking them to participate in Green Globe, an international quality standard focused on these issues. We hope support from the European Commission can help more businesses make that transition.
The difficult part of tourism planning is that success cannot be measured only by growth. More visitors create more income, but they also use more water and energy, produce more waste and place greater pressure on our reefs and coastline.
One hundred thousand visitors is not a reluctant limit; it is an acknowledgement that an island this size can carry only so much.
If Bonaire exceeds its limits, it risks losing the quiet, nature and marine life that made tourism successful in the first place.
Our goal is not to keep visitors away. It is to welcome a number the island can support and to use tourism income to protect life here. For Bonaire, restraint is not the opposite of success; it is what makes long-term success possible.