Overpricing danger

As Barbados seeks to rebuild its slowly re-emerging tourism industry, one industry veteran is warning officials to be careful not to price themselves out of the market.

This caution has come from tourism consultant Dr Kerry Hall, who said the mature destinations seemed “stagnant” while developing ones were “surging ahead” as they emerged from the debilitating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic which brought the industry to a standstill in 2020 and 2021.

“If we work better together, I think we will see a lot more benefits for the region. We also have an issue with a tired product. We need to look at our product, look at the price index of our product because in many ways I think we are pricing ourselves out of the market,” suggested Hall.

“There is one thing being an expensive destination and we call ourselves aspirational for many years, but when value for money is not perceived you become an overpriced destination and people have realised, and this started from back in the great recession of 2008, when they could go somewhere else and get better services or product at a cheaper price than Barbados,” she argued.

Pointing to the challenges facing the globe, including rising inflation, currency fluctuations, the climate crisis and geopolitical tensions, Hall said money was becoming “scarce” for a lot of people in Barbados’ key tourism source markets.

Hall said she believed tourism operators should have been more proactive in their efforts to woo visitors to the island as soon as the COVID-19 restrictions eased.

“We need to be able to exist in this new world order. It is not waiting for us, the world is not waiting for us. The two years down-time that we had for tourism we should have been in the engine room planning our re-emergence onto the world stage because trust me, the rest of the world was doing that,” she said.

“That is why you see when the floodgates have flown back everybody shot out and Barbados seemed to have been stuck in the gates. There is no reason why we should have been stuck in the gates, because our brand is one of the foremost brands in this region and the world,” said Hall.

The former Chief Executive Officer of the then Barbados Tourism Product Authority, also pointed to the need for more research and trend analysis to help refresh the island’s tourism product and drive business.

Hall said she believed too much emphasis was still being placed on promotion while product enhancement and pricing seemed to be underserved.

“When you look at marketing it is made up of product, price, place and promotion. I think many times we jump over the first three and land and spend all the money on promotion, but we have not refreshed our product so we have to ask ourselves what we are marketing. What are we marketing to a changing consumer, particularly a post-COVID consumer,” she said, as she pointed to the need for improved infrastructure across the island.

“The consumer changed during COVID-19. They are looking for new things, more sustainable types of experiences and more authentic [offerings]. For over a decade it has been coming but it has accelerated now in a post-COVID world,” she argued.

“I believe we are very reactive as a destination. In order to be proactive, research needs to be one of the major areas of focus for us, I don’t think we respect research, and I am talking trend analysis – to be able to know what the trends are – the marketing trends, the economic trends, the environmental trends, the technological trends and most importantly, the consumer behaviour trends,” she explained.

Hall was speaking during the recent BHTA third quarterly general meeting at the Mount Gay Visitor Centre, which was held under the theme Enhancing the Tourism Industry – Real Change.

Hall, who has written several policy papers over the years on ways to further develop the industry, said despite numerous studies from various individuals and groups, Barbados still had an “implementation deficit disorder”.

“I am sure every problem we have in tourism now there is something on a shelf somewhere with solutions. We just have not implemented it. We have to move to being a more proactive, actionable type of industry in order for us to move quickly,” said Hall.