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26 AWEMainta Diamars 11 November 2025

Who Really Benefits from AHATA’s Tourism Agenda?

By a concerned citizen

self-sabotage.

Take, for example, AHATA’s call for a moratorium on new hotels
and new laws to “regulate” vacation rentals. On the hotel side,
a moratorium makes sense. Aruba doesn’t need another wall of
concrete on our coastline. Growth should be smart, not endless.

Our beaches, roads, and water supply can’t handle unlimited
development. A pause on new large-scale hotel projects could
actually protect what’s left of our island’s natural balance.

But the part about vacation rentals is different. What AHATA is
proposing isn’t about regulation — it’s about control. They want
to cripple the local vacation-rental sector by making it so complex
LIKE many fellow Arubans, I’ve been following AHATA’s recent and costly to operate that only big investors or hotel-linked compa-

11-point proposal on tourism — filled with calls for moratoriums, nies can survive.
new regulations, and stricter controls. On the surface, it sounds
like they want to “protect” our island. But when you look closer, it Let’s not pretend this is about “fairness.” What AHATA wants isn’t

becomes clear that what AHATA is really doing is trying to protect competition, it’s protectionism — protecting its members from
its own power, not the people of Aruba. change instead of encouraging innovation. In a fair market, you
don’t grow by shutting others out; you grow by improving your
Let’s be honest about who AHATA is. It’s a private lobby group product. If hotels are losing occupancy, maybe it’s time to inno-
created to serve multinational hotel chains, not ordinary citizens. vate, not intimidate.

Its loyalty lies with the big resorts and investors who fund it —
not with the families trying to build a small business or the young Some politicians have even started echoing AHATA’s message,
Arubans dreaming of owning a piece of the tourism economy. So blaming vacation rentals for the housing shortage. That’s an easy

when AHATA presents a long list of demands, we must ask: who story to sell — but it’s not the full truth. Yes, short-term rentals
really benefits — the island, or the corporations? affect housing a bit, but the bigger problem comes from importing
thousands of workers to staff massive hotels and resorts. Every
AHATA likes to say it represents all kinds of accommodation — new tower means more workers, more housing demand, and more
hotels, timeshares, and short term rentals. But that’s not true. strain on our infrastructure. It’s unfair to blame local homeowners

In reality, AHATA represents only a handful of short-term rental for a problem driven largely by unchecked large-scale develop-

companies, maybe one or two big ones. The rest — the small ment.
homeowners renting out a room or apartment — are not members

of AHATA and not represented by its agenda. When AHATA claims
to speak for the entire sector, it’s being disingenuous. Worse, its
proposals would hurt the very small property owners it pretends
to include.

And what makes this even harder to swallow is that this lobby —
built to defend multinational profits — is run by our own people.
Arubans, often with the best intentions, are being used to advance

an agenda that sends profits abroad and weakens local opportu-
nity. It’s painful to see locals fighting locals, while foreign corpora-
tions quietly take the winnings. That’s not nation building — that’s