We just booked our first trip to Bonaire for this fall and are really excited to go! Can't wait. My ticker says only 151 days to go!!!

Just out of curiosity though I did the math on the tourist tax the island collects, and we will pay about $180 for our one week stay ($6.50 a day pp, $32 departure tax, $25 to dive).

I am very curious where this money goes? Does it stay local or partly go back to the Dutch mothership?

I also did the math on what the island possibly collects annually from tourists. If the average couple pays $180 like us and Bonaire averages 40,000 tourists annually who each stay just one week, that's just slightly over $1 million!

If tourists are contributing that kind of investment to Bonaire, why couldn't part of that money be spent to buy one police cruiser and pay for one officer to just drive around to the various dive sites once a day? (about $75,000 would probably cover it) Maybe a beefed up police presence would help prevent some of the dive site theft I've read about, and it would help the island protect its future tourist dollars.

I'm not complaining about paying the tourist tax. My city really sticks it to tourists -- we have about a 13% hotel/motel tax and around 20% rental car tax at our airport. Ouch! I realize local governments need taxes to operate and provide services. But I'm just curious where my tax dollars on Bonaire will go.

Thanks for any local insight.

Your question points out the reason we are trying to change our relationship with Holland. Out taxes are widely dispersed and it appears that once we establish a closer tie with the "mothership" more of it will be spent where it was generated..

Michael, doesn't the $25.00 BMP dive tag go to the Marine Park?

Cynde, I think you're right about that. And, it's not a tax. If you go to Bonaire twice or more in a calendar year you only pay that fee the first time. And if you you go in December, you'll get the next year's tag if I'm not mistaken, so it's good for the entire year following.

OK, so the $25 to dive is not a tax per se, it is a fee to use the park. Hey, I'm all for that! Wish more islands were as conscientious as Bonaire and had protected waters and reefs! That's a huge part of why we want to go there!

I've learned from the park Web site that "the money you pay in admission fees comes straight to the Marine Park and allows us to continue to maintain the park, provide you with information, undertake research and protect the marine environment." That's great!

And I think my math was way off. (I obviously was not a math major!) 40000 x $90 a person is more like $3.6 million, right? And the park site says Bonaire gets about 70000 visitors annually, so that's about $6.3 million, assuming all of them dive and pay that fee as well. Wow!

Pauline,

Not all visitors to Bonaire are doing activities that require paying the BMP fee; your number is the top possible and way above what is. One of the locals can likely give us the number of tags sold last year.

Michael didn't say it as explicitly as this but much of the actual tax revenue goes to the Central Government in Curacao, which results in it being 'widely dispersed' (read 'spent in Curacao') as Michael so delicately put it. In plain language, only a small percentage is returned to Bonaire (or any of the other small islands). That is why the small islands wanted out of the Netherlands Antilles (dominated by Curacao) and why they are looking forward to the new relationship.

$1M isn't all that much, BTW. Doesn't take much of a road or school to put a big dent into $1M. I just did a quick search, and Gretna, Nebraska, a town of 3000 people (about one fifth the size of Bonaire), just floated a school bond of $29M. Puts $1M (or $10M) into perspective, doesn't it?

Less than 50% of arrivals are divers so you do the math! That is one reason we have asked others to pay $10 to use the park facilities. Also the money that goes to the park pays salaries, insurance, gasoline, upkeep etc ad infinitum. Again, once you do the math you will find tight budgets and programs than can't be realized due to lack of funding. You also should take note that STINAPA is more than just the Marine Park.