DENIAL DENIAL DENIAL

This pompousness makes me want to vomit. Who do they think they are? Some invincible country that can do no wrong? Aruba, you are dealing with the United States. There are millions of pissed off people that want to see your country go down...don't forget about that when you lie to yourself about how you are still "one happy island".

ARUBA (20 Mar 2006) -- Widespread publicity about the disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway may be having an impact on the number of American tourists visiting Aruba, (Don'tcha think???) but Massachusetts residents headed to the Caribbean island in record numbers last year. (So what? That's ONE state. We've got 50 here, you know.)



Officials at the Aruba Tourism Authority say arrivals from Massachusetts, the island's second largest US market behind New York, totaled more than 61,000 through the first 11 months of 2005, an increase of 12.5 percent over the same period in 2004.

Overall, however, arrivals from the United States were up less than 1 percent over the 11-month period, well off the pace of previous years.

Gina Lopez, a spokeswoman for the tourism authority, said travel numbers softened in the second half of the year because some hotels shut down for renovations, room prices rose dramatically, and many travelers crossed the Caribbean off their lists after the harsh hurricane season. (Excuses, excuses...Did the dog eat your homework, too?)

Lopez said the publicity over Holloway's unsolved disappearance ''may have had some impact," but she maintained it was minimal. ''The effect was mostly on Aruba's image rather than its tourism numbers," she said.

Still, Aruba is eager to put the negative publicity behind it. Officials say a record $230 million in public and private money is expected to be invested in the island's tourism economy this year.



Tourism represents 85 percent of Aruba's economy, Lopez said. Aruba is known as a fairly upscale, tourist-friendly place far enough south -- it is off the coast of Venezuela -- to miss the hurricanes that regularly sweep through the region. The island is popular with Americans looking for sun in an environment that is a little different from Florida but not strikingly so.



The intense poverty that characterizes some Caribbean islands is absent from Aruba, where the standard of living is relatively high and the unemployment rate relatively low.



After Holloway's disappearance last May and the ensuing media barrage, the island's image took a beating. The tourism industry saw the story as a serious threat and created a team of local officials that operates under the name Aruba Truth. (A joke...an outright mediocre PR move.) ''It's an incident of very great concern to everyone that has a stake in the tourism industry," said Carlos Aquino, director of Caribbean sales and marketing for InterContinental Hotels Corp., which operates a Holiday Inn on Aruba.



Holloway, 18, went to Aruba with other graduates of Mountain Brook High School near Birmingham, Ala. She was last seen at a tourist-oriented bar and grill at 1:30 a.m. on May 30. She never showed up for her departing flight later that day. No one has been charged in connection with Holloway's disappearance, and officials have stressed that the incident was an aberration for their peaceful island. (You've GOT to be kidding me...they are blaming Natalee for what Joran did to their peaceful island? Talk about abusing the victim...you people are so sad and pathetic.)



To offset the negative publicity (Thanks to Joran et al.) government and industry leaders are pushing ahead with a number of projects to ensure tourism growth. (But screw Natalee, right? Are you actually thinking that will go away soon?) In addition to hotel renovations and expansions and restaurant openings, Aruba is spending $34 million on airport improvements and planning to spend another $16 million to build a greenway park that will stretch from the airport to the end of the high-rise hotel corridor and involve relocating parts of the port facility. (Aruba can spend all this money, but they can't solve this case We are obviously dealing with some really unintelligent and unconscionable people.)

Officials are also launching a training program called ''The Aruba Promise" for people involved in the tourism industry. (PUKE! I'm dry heaving...)

Lopez said the training is designed to make sure tourism workers are in sync with Aruba's tagline of ''One Happy Island." (Forget it...that slogan is LONG GONE...) ''We have to pay attention to the little details."