No time for complacency, says BHTA head

The steady increase in visitor arrivals and the industry’s contribution to the island’s economic growth is music to the ears of Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) Ryan Forde.
Welcoming the report by the Central Bank of Barbados that tourism continued to drive economic growth, with some 162 198 long-stay visitors and 242 657 in-transit cruise passengers coming to the island during the first three months of this year, Forde said this was a strong indication that the destination remained top-of-mind for travellers.
The increase in long-stay visitor arrivals for the quarter represents 78 per cent of the pre-COVID 2019 levels, when the island welcomed 208,774 tourists.
“Coming out of the major two and a half years of COVID lockdowns off and on, it is positive news to see that Barbados is still top-of-mind in terms of the corporate world as well as the leisure travellers,” Forde told Barbados TODAY.
In his report, Central Bank Governor Dr Kevin Greenidge said the 6.4 per cent economic growth for the January to March 2023 period was driven by the expansion of the tourism industry, which experienced improved performance in all the major source markets, when compared to the same period last year.
“This growth in tourism spilled over into the other sectors of the economy, resulting in the unemployment rate falling by 3.7 percentage points to 7.2 per cent at the end of 2022, relative to 2021,” said Greenidge.
Forde said this was good news, as he pointed to the strong linkages between tourism and other sectors and industries.
However, he indicated that there was no room for complacency, adding that the aim of industry operators should be reaching and surpassing the record levels of 2019.
“We cannot rest on our laurels, but what we can do is use that information to know that we are in demand. There is demand for Barbados and we must be able to supply further,” said Forde.
“It is good to see that the comparison is with 2019 because 2019 was a very good year, a record year. It allows us the opportunity to gauge how we can get back to 100 per cent, but how then do we go to 125 per cent or 150 per cent of what 2019 was. The whole idea is to reach the benchmark and surpass it. I think the numbers are looking good from an economic standpoint,” he said.
At the same time, Forde said the BHTA continued to keep a close eye on the external developments that had the potential to derail the island’s chances of reaching and surpassing its 2019 record levels for visitor arrivals.
“We have to obviously [pay attention to] the external challenges that we face, whether it is the rise in oil and gas, whether there are wars, whether there are high inputs in the agriculture sector – all of these things we have to juggle and keep recalculating. We also have to keep in mind that tourism is one of the main industries, not just in the economy but it connects a lot,” he said.
In fact, pointing to the devastating impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the tourism industry, Forde recalled that there was also a crippling knock-on effect on a range of other industries due to their strong linkages with tourism.
He said even as authorities and industry officials move to diversify the tourism industry, careful attention must be given to other sectors.
“Instead of us trying to focus on bringing one sector up over the other, all of them need to come up and progress together,” he said.
Forde declined to comment on the discovery of inconsistencies in the figures being reported on for the tourism industry from as far back as October 2019.
In his report, the Central Bank Governor noted that the figures being reported for the first three months were “under-estimated” and that the Government was “currently working to resolve a discrepancy in the tourism arrivals data, which has been occurring since October 2019”.
“We have been working closely together, all the agencies. In fact, I have had the privilege of leading the team with the Chief Immigration Officer, also with the head of the BTMI and GAIA Inc, and our preliminary results suggest that on average – and this is using for example, November data – our arrivals are actually roughly 6,000 more than we actually build into our numbers,” Greenidge explained.
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