Research and analysis vital if tourism sector is to rebound

by Marlon Madden

Research and analysis will be crucial to Barbados’ tourism survival in the future, says Chairman of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) Geoffrey Roach.

He said while the pandemic had already forced businesses to make certain changes, it was important for them to take a more critical look at their organisations and “engage in business process reengineering” if they wanted to survive beyond the pandemic.

However, Roach insisted that data gathering and analysis will be critical to this process.

“A lot of us know our customers intuitively, but certainly we need to take a more scientific approach to knowing our customers and understanding what their needs are and what they are looking for. And it is not just our customers, but persons who are looking to travel at large,” said Roach.

He was addressing the recent BHTA quarterly meeting, which was held under the theme Tourism: Surviving Beyond COVID-19.

He urged industry players to start sharing more of the island’s success stories with the rest of the world as the destination emerges from the grasp of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the BHTA continued to deepen relations with the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. especially in the area of data gathering and analysis, as officials eagerly await an influx of tourists to the island once more.

“One of the areas of discussion with the BTMI is how we can work together, along with other relevant agencies and interest groups, to produce and disseminate statistics and research on the industry that is more in depth and suits the purposes of a diverse set of users,” Roach told the online gathering.

He expressed disappointment at the low level of information currently available on the Barbados’ tourism sector compared to less mature destinations.

“It is really painful to think that some other destinations have such a wealth of research available and we don’t. It is not like we don’t have the data but what we need to do is a lot more analysis on the data we have and turn that information out and make it more available to those persons within the industry,” he proposed, while pointing out that the BHTA was also working closely with the Barbados Private Sector Association on a range of matters that were of similar interest to the wider private sector.

In addition, Roach is eager to see industry players taking the issue of training more seriously, stating that while some effort has been made over the years those efforts “have not gotten as far as we would have liked to”.

He said the BHTA recently submitted a proposal regarding industry training to the Ministry of Tourism, with the view of having some opportunities being made available to BHTA members under the Barbados Employment and Sustainable Transformation (BEST) programme.

There are two components under the BEST scheme – rehiring and training and of staff, and investment in plant upgrade.

Under the first component, tourism-related entities are able to receive grant funding to rehire their workers on 80 per cent of their normal salary for up to two years, should the need arise, and offer training to their employees.

Roach said he was not satisfied that tourism operators were doing enough training.

He said the BHTA has already reached out to the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Council “and a number of other agencies and we are hopeful that over the next few months there will be greater traction on the training aspect of what is required for the industry”.

“What I want to do is urge both the persons who are applying to the BEST programme and those who are not applying to share information with us in terms of what your plans are for training so that we can leverage the requirement with relevant training agencies,” he said.

marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb