High demand for Barbados

Barbados and several other Caribbean countries are among the top destination choices for people searching for and booking trips this holiday season.

However, experts say while this was a show of confidence in the region as a tourist destination, there was a need for continued strong research and targeted marketing strategies, attractive offers and flexibility, while promoting the region as a safe destination in a COVID-19 environment with new variants spreading.

This was highlighted on Wednesday during a special Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) winter outlook press conference.

Providing an insight into some of the data gathered by the Expedia Group Media Solutions on the Caribbean, Ana Paradela, Director of Business Development, said “We are definitely seeing that the Caribbean is one of the most important regions for the US traveller and we have a lot of reasons to celebrate when it comes to 2021.”

She said based on recently completed analysis of the company’s global recovery trends for the third quarter of this year, global search volumes were holding steady and the search window leading up to travel was between zero to 30 days.

The “travel intent” data from the Expedia Group showed that 41 per cent of all accommodation searches for travel to the Caribbean were for hotels, she noted.

“No surprise here that the US continues to be the top international market when it comes to the Caribbean and that 63 per cent of those total searches for the Caribbean are coming from Expedia.com US,” she reported.

Adding that 61 per cent of the searches were from mobile devices, Paradela said it was important that destinations have “an attractive and aggressive” offer for mobile.

She said for Expedia Group, between January and November this year, the top 10 source markets from which the searches and bookings for the Caribbean were coming were the US, Canada, UK, France, Brazil, Spain, Netherlands, Mexico, Germany and Switzerland.

The top Caribbean destinations that people were searching and booking for during the same period were the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Bahamas, United States Virgin Island, Aruba, Turks and Caicos, St Maarten, St Lucia and Barbados.

Paradela said the Expedia Group data for the Caribbean consisted of some 55 per cent couples, 26 per cent family travellers, 11 per cent multiple adults and eight per cent single travellers.

“This is a great opportunity to understand what is your traveller profile and make sure you have a very good strategy for every single market and every single segment,” she said.

Looking forward, Paradela said “We are very optimistic and remain optimistic about what we are seeing for 2022.”

She said there was strong interest in searches for the Caribbean for December and January and a downward slope for February and March. She suggested that the fewer searches for those later months had to do with the short booking window.

“So let’s make sure we continue to have very attractive offers for the Caribbean. Let’s make sure we continue to offer flexibility, continue to offer and convey a message of how safe and how all the protocols are in place in the Caribbean, and make sure we stay present,” said Paradela.

Meanwhile, Olivier Ponti, Vice President of Insights at ForwardKeys, a travel research and data analytics firm specialising in air travel, said data from that company showed that last month the Caribbean was a clear leading destination for international travel.

He said the region was only 16 per cent down on 2019 levels, while other regions were between 37 per cent and 88 per cent behind their 2019 figures.

“This shows that the Caribbean has performed very well. This has been the case for many months now,” said Ponti.

He said data showed that top performers for the month of November included the United States Virgin Islands, Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, Aruba, Curacao, Puerto Rico, St Maarten, Bahamas, Jamaica and Barbados.

The top markets in the last quarter of this year for people seeking to travel to the region included the Netherlands, France, Colombia, USA and the UK.

He said when it came to forward booking for travel to the Caribbean, a lot of it was coming from the USA, Netherlands, France, UK and Chile.

Ponti further noted that the top ten destinations with tickets confirmed for international arrivals between January and February 28, 2022, were the USVI, Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba islands, St Maarten, Turks and Caicos, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Aruba, Guadeloupe, St Lucia and Jamaica.

Noting that air capacity was also increasing, Ponti said “The situation can change over the coming months of course, but this shows a certain degree of confidence in the region.”

“Working on rebuilding air connectivity may be a good strategy for destinations to further accelerate the recovery,” said Ponti.

“It seems to be there are good reasons to believe that the Caribbean will be one of the few tourism hot spots this winter and that means plenty of opportunities for destinations and tourism businesses,” he said. marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb