BEST not free money for tourism players

Barbados’ largest private-sector tourism representative body is pushing back against lingering suggestions that the Barbados Employment and Sustainable Transformation (BEST) programme was an attempt to throw “free money” at tourism stakeholders.

On the contrary, Chairman of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) Renee Coppin has credited the initiative with saving over 3,000 jobs at 48 establishments across the country.

In a Barbados TODAY interview, she also reiterated that for many hoteliers, the instruments which were delivered in the form of grants and preference shares will be repaid.

“There is something that was volleyed around very loosely on the political platforms and coming out of the election period. There seems to be a perception that the hoteliers got all this money through the BEST programme and there was all this money floating around and that we accessed tax payers’ dollars,” Coppin declared.

“I really want to lend some clarity to this discussion because the BEST programme, as it says, was about employment and transformation and those were the two areas that really the government was trying to focus on. So, those of us who got involved did so primarily because it was the only route through which we could keep our businesses open and operational.

“The only other option would have been to shutter our businesses and hope for tourism to come back, at which point we would hope to reopen our businesses. So, Government extended a lifeline to us to allow us to continue our businesses and to bring our staff back and we did so, many of us, by taking on debt,” the hotelier added.

Coppin, who is General Manager of Pirate’s Inn and Infinity on the Beach, revealed that about $48 million had been disbursed to 48 tourism entities, as opposed to the $300 million being bandied about.

“Forty-eight tourism entities became involved in that programme – 21 of which were hotels, four attractions, six restaurants, five water sport operators, three retail and souvenir shops, two destination management companies, one ground handling company, one car rental, one nightclub, one sports entity, one villa management company, one company in tours and transfers and one company that was in marketing, for a total of 48,” Coppin revealed.

“Under that programme, almost 3,000 persons were re-engaged and I can speak personally to this because there were times in my property where I had more staff than I had guests. So this programme was a tremendous benefit to the sector. It was not free money floating around.

“Some of us will have to repay it, some of us did it by matching the funds that the government gave us at a time when we had very little cash flow and no business happening. But we did it because we believe in our industry and we had a belief that we could come back and resurge and it was an investment that the government allowed us to make in ourselves,” the BHTA Chair concluded.
kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb