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Published On: Fri, Sep 28th, 2018

StMaartenNews.com World Tourism Day Message: “Keep St. Maarten Clean Like Saba”

The Bottom, Saba

Thursday, September 27, 2018, is World Tourism Day and apparently also World Maritime Day. So the cruise industry is having a double celebration.

Today we also published a World Tourism Day flyer from the Saba Tourist Office. What we have noticed during our recent visit to Saba is that the island takes enormous pride in its tourism product. From the very top of Saba Mountain to The Bottom. On land as well as above and below the ocean.

We took pictures of the island during a tour with the Director of the Saba Tourist Office, Glenn Holm, and while reviewing the photos we got the idea for a quiz to highlight the impressive cleanliness of the island.

While driving along the ‘great wall of Saba‘ we noticed how clean the streets were. Holm explained that the Public Works Department sweeps the street literally every day.

This is the primary explanation for the cleanliness of the island and St. Maarten’s Public Works Department of the ministry of VROMI should definitely read a page out of Saba’s manual on how to keep the island clean and attractive so that tourists will definitely enjoy their vacation stay on the island.

However, we also saw and heard stories about the ‘social control’ that also leads to the people of Saba having enormous pride in cleaning and maintain that cleanliness of the island. A StMaartenNews.com subscriber emailed us the correct answer to our Saba Quiz and proceeded to tell his story about having to get up every morning, go out and clean up the garbage that people simply throw out of their car windows when they are parked and sitting in their cars in the parking lot of his business premises during the night.

Over the years we have learnt the mantra that integrity is about doing the right thing even when no one is looking. Clearly St. Maarten people not only need to have integrity in their daily life but also they need to have some pride as well. Pride in our beautiful island and pride in keeping it beautiful. And clean. Like Saba! (If only we had a better solution for the garbage disposal!)

With that message we hope World Tourism Day will give us something to think about when we compare pictures of Saba to St. Maarten.