Tourism expert calls for travel approval

The head of one of the United Kingdom’s leading travel branding companies is calling for Barbados to be placed on Britain’s green list for leisure travel.

Paul Charles, chief executive officer of The PC Agency, a BBC presenter and former director of Virgin Atlantic, made the bid recently for Caribbean destinations like Barbados and Jamaica to be officially approved for travel again given the current COVID-19 infection and vaccination rates in these popular tourism spots for British tourists.

The travel expert noted that “several criteria determine a country’s colour”, however, Charles contended that among the main factors which should beconsidered for placing a country on the green list were its 14-day infection rate and the ability of the country to regularly check for new variants of coronavirus.

Charles said his company, whose clients include Aer Lingus, Finnair as well as several luxury hotels around the world, had created some criteria which it said the British Government should adopt.

“Countries should be on the green list based at looking at the infection rates and the percentage of the population who have been vaccinated in each country,” he told the British media.

On his Twitter account which has more than 39 000 followers, Charles wrote: The Caribbean islands such as Grenada, Barbados, St Lucia, Antigua, St Kitts have some of the lowest COVID infection and mortality rates in the world and have managed the crisis well so far. Most of their visitors US and UK – have been fully jabbed. They should be green.”

In response, a Department for Transport spokesperson told Britain’s Sun newspaper: “Country classification on the department’s traffic light system is guided by the evidence and analysis of a range of key factors, including rates of infection, the prevalence of variants of concern, and the country’s access to reliable scientific data and genomic sequencing.”

The UK is experiencing one of the wettest Mays on record and several travel experts expressed disappointment that popular Caribbean destinations like Barbados were on the amber list which have not been sanctioned for travel by British tourists.

Some of the countries on the amber list along with Barbados include Canada, China, France, Germany, and the United States.

The green list includes countries such as Australia, Falkland Islands, Iceland, New Zealand, Singapore, and Portugal.

The red list of countries for which British citizens have been banned, includes South Africa, Brazil, India, Argentina, Pakistan, Kenya and Bangladesh.

In a recent interview, Roseanne Myers, chairperson of the Barbados Tourism  Marketing Inc.

(BTMI) revealed there was great demand for Barbados with bookings for the coming winter season being very encouraging.

Barbados’ placement on the amber list has disappointed tourism officials who said revival of the Barbados economy hinges on a rapid restart of the tourism sector which has lost more than 70 per cent of its activity due to the coronavirus pandemic. (IMC1)