IDB predicts tough task ahead

An Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) publication is suggesting that it could take years before there is a full rebound of tourism to pre-COVID-19 levels in Barbados and the region.

In its latest edition of Caribbean Quarterly Bulletin, the multilateral institution, which has its regional office in Barbados, said the latest information regarding expectations for a return of international tourism was that it was some time away.

“Only 15 per cent of experts surveyed by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation in late 2020 expected a full restoration of activity globally by end-2022, while a roughly equal proportion of pundits (about 40 per cent) predict that a full normalisation of the sector will only materialise by either end-2023 or end-2024,” the IDB report pointed out.

Importantly, the document authored by Olga Gomez Garcia, Henry Mooney, David Rosenblatt, and Maria Alejandra Zegarra, assessed that normalisation of the tourism sector in key Caribbean countries will depend heavily on control of the COVID-19 virus in the source markets. Other key factors they identified included vaccine distribution, as well as the disposable income and preferences of travellers.

Outlining just how devastating the COVID-19 pandemic has been on regional economies, including Barbados’, the IDB publication stated: “The COVID-19 pandemic represents a new kind of economic shock for countries in the region.

The human toll of the pandemic has been tragically high, and this has been its most significant implication.

“But the crisis has also affected key sectors of the region’s economies with a speed and persistence that few could have imagined only a year ago.

One reflection of this has been the shock to real GDP growth in 2020, which represented the largest decline in most of our countries since 1975.”

The authors said that based on the data for the three most tourism dependent countries of The Bahamas, Barbados, and Jamaica “the first quarter of 2020 saw air and cruise ship arrivals at between 77 and 85 per cent of their 2019 levels, followed by a precipitous contraction to near zero arrivals in the second quarter”. (IMC1)