Minister of Tourism Ian Gooding-Edghill is rubbishing suggestions that neighbouring destinations such as St Lucia and Grenada were performing much better than Barbados since the COVID-19 pandemic.
As debate began today on the Appropriations Bill 2023 in the House of Assembly with the focus on the Ministry of Tourism and International Transport’s allocation of $26.5 million for this financial year, the minister described the suggestion as a “nonsense argument”, pointing out that Barbados was relatively late in removing many of the COVID-19 restrictions that impacted the travel and hospitality sector.
Moreover, the tourism minister, who is five months into the job, but is a long-standing tourism executive, told the Lower Chamber that Barbados attracts three times as many visitors as Grenada and 1.5 times more than Antigua and Barbuda and St Lucia was still behind Barbados in arrivals numbers.
Responding to a question from Minister of Sport and Member of Parliament for St John, Charles Griffith, Gooding-Edghill said his response was not intended to “put down” any country in the region, but he wanted to respond to the talk that Barbados’ tourism sector was under-performing in comparison to some of its neighbours.
According to the minister, destinations such as the Bahamas and Jamaica were doing much better than Barbados and much of their performance was linked to their geographical location. He said they were within an hour from the United States and this helped to make them more cost-effective as a destination.
The tourism and international transport minister, who was supported in the Chamber by top brass from his ministry and key players from the Bridgetown Port and Caves of Barbados Ltd, argued that “airlift remains the solution” to sustaining and growing tourism arrival numbers to Barbados. At the same time, he said, the rebound in global travel and tourism after the pandemic was negatively impacted by a human resource shortage in the airline industry.
Several pilots and other airline staff retired or left the sector resulting in a shortage of trained personnel in the field.
The minister pointed out that one of the challenges facing tourism was ensuring that the cost of airfare to the island did not become so exorbitant that it was prohibitive to visit the country.
In addition, Gooding-Edghill said Barbados was seeking consistency with airlift and to get seasonal air traffic to the country to become year-round.
Responding to a question from St Michael West MP Christopher Gibbs on how the ministry was preparing for any possible instability in the sector, the tourism minister contended there was heavy pent-up demand for travel and the arrival numbers and forward bookings for the coming summer period between May and October reflected a significant increase over last year.
He disclosed that bookings for May to October as at February 5, stood at 34 368 and this compared to 26 674 for the same period in 2022.
He argued that travellers were using the discretionary spending that was built up during the pandemic to enjoy themselves during this post-pandemic period.
Gooding-Edghill, however, noted that while some hotels may not be reflecting that increase in forward bookings, he suggested that some of the travellers may be going to villas and other alternative locations.
(IMC1)
