#BTEditorial – Getting creative when the bottom falls out

The latest episode involving the SeaDream Yacht Club cruiser is a reminder of not only the continued deadly danger posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but our desperate dependence on the tourism sector to revive our economy.

The super luxury mega yacht’s owners took a major gamble this month to resume cruising under what they thought were extremely rigorous COVID-19 protocols, requiring crew and passengers to undergo multiple tests for the illness and instituting extensive sanitising and social distancing procedures.

They chose the usual playgrounds for the rich and famous – Barbados, St Vincent, Canouan, the Tobago Cays and Union Island; places it felt created that secure bubble.

SeaDream’s return to the seas ahead of its competitors in the business was intended to be the perfect model in a post-COVID-19 environment.

The operators’ major failing was reportedly their decision not to institute mask wearing for their well-to-do passengers. This may have proven to be the cruise’s consequential error that has now doomed its re-emergence.

This publication was the first to report SeaDream’s audacious plan to resume cruising despite the sector-wide consensus that the image of this tourism product had been so badly damaged and the fear that ships represented ideal petri dishes for COVID-19 to spread, made it impossible to restart before winter of 2021.

But with a confirmed outbreak of seven cases among the 53 wealthy passengers and 66 crew, it is back to square one for the company and for Barbados’ tourism officials.

The Mia Mottley administration and its long list of economic and other consultants will have to return to the drawing board. Clearly, a forced restart to this industry, particularly the cruise sector, poses multi-faceted risks and could even result in damage to the Barbados brand.

Those who wish to acknowledge it concede that our economy and our livelihoods are inextricably tied to this sector and most of us cannot conceive how Barbadians can continue to enjoy the standard of living we have become accustomed to unless we can again extract meaningful amounts of foreign dollars from this sector.

Government’s provision of hundreds of millions of dollars under the Barbados Employment Sustainability and Transformation (BEST) programme to shore up hoteliers and other tourism-related businesses, suggests that it views the sector as the economy’s best hope for recovery.

On the other hand, some have argued, convincingly, that the Government has deceived itself into believing there could be any meaningful resurgence of tourism this year, even during the winter season.

Despite the increased air traffic by the major carriers from the United Kingdom, Canada and United States, the fact remains that despite all the market surveys pointing to pent up demand for leisure travel, there is also an equally great fear of contracting COVID-19 either in the desired destination or en route, via commercial travel.

It was instructive that Mrs Roseanne Myers, the General Manager of Atlantis Submarines Barbados Inc., who is also a former president of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association, decided to close her company’s operations last March, even though it still had major bookings from cruise ships.

“We took the decision to shut down because we weren’t sure what exactly we would face, and we were not comfortable to expose staff . . . . We cancelled the . . .  last cruise ship bookings. We said ‘thank you but no thanks’ and we took the position that it was important to protect the staff rather than go after every cent until the business dried up,” Myers said at a recent discussion hosted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados.

This, from a woman who leads a tourist attraction relying heavily on the 60 per cent of business it derives from cruise passengers alone. Even more telling was her company’s sacrifice. It placed the safety of employees well above revenue on the value chain.

Having closed the company’s doors in March, Myers believes there is little chance for a safe reopening until December. She has relied heavily on her bankers and financiers, convincing them to hold strain and have faith in the company’s ability to regroup, restructure, and return as a leaner, fitter, more efficient operation.

There is much, we believe, Barbados can learn from the decisions of this company. The downturn will not last forever. The question remains, how much are we as a country and as a people, prepared to sacrifice in the interest of preserving the health of our citizens and preventing the collapse of our health care system under the weight of this pandemic?