Headwinds

Tourism industry faces challenge increasing airlift despite demand By Marlon Madden Barbados’ tourism product continues to face several challenges as it relates to airlift capacity, Minister of Tourism and International Transport Ian Gooding-Edghill has reported. However, he has given the assurance that his ministry, along with the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI), were doing all in their power to maintain the current “strong” load factors and add new flights to the destination, even as they looked for ways to get visitors to spend more while on island. Addressing the 23rd annual general meeting of the Intimate Hotels of Barbados at the Island Inn Hotel on Wednesday, Gooding-Edghill reported that the airline industry was still struggling with inadequate aircraft and pilots. He also reported that some airlines were choosing to bypass Barbados for more profitable routes as they rebuild from losses sustained during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The challenges will continue within the aviation sector but I wish to assure you that the Ministry and the BTMI will certainly continue to maintain partnerships with the industry and we will continue to be in meetings with them; we will do what is absolutely necessary to ensure that we strengthen airlift and get them into Barbados,” said Gooding-Edghill. “The challenge that we are faced with is that a lot of the airlines, for multiple reasons, don’t have the aircraft available. They are pointing their aircraft to destinations that they believe are extraordinarily profitable because during COVID they consume a lot of debt. “The other issue in respect of airlift coming out of the United States, [is that] there are some airlines that have indicated to us that their departures are down and the reason for that is that during the course of the COVID period, what some airlines did [was] retire their aircraft – the 747s and other aircrafts. They did so because they thought those aircrafts were inefficient…. The other issue we are faced with in the aviation sector has to do with the lack of pilots. They are just not available,” the Tourism Minister explained. Gooding-Edghill told the group of hoteliers that one way Barbados was dealing with this situation was strengthening longstanding  partnerships. He said several meetings had been conducted with airline executives, especially in the United Kingdom market, who gave the assurance that existing airlift into Barbados was “protected”. “Notwithstanding all of those challenges, we have to continue to make the case for airlift into Barbados and that is what we have been doing,” Gooding-Edghill said as he pointed to several recent meetings also held in the United States with existing airlines, including American Airlines, and prospective ones such as Southwest and Spirit Airlines. He reiterated that the Latin America market and the Gulf states were being targeted to get more visitors to the island. The Gulf states include countries near the Persian Gulf, including Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. “This year, we had our first attendance at the Arabian Travel Market and that went very well. The interest in Barbados is very high. Of course, there will be some adaptations that we will have to consider because of the unique culture and customs of those visitors, but it is something we can readily adapt to, and that is something that we are working on within the Ministry of Tourism and the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc,” he said. In relation to the Latin America market, Gooding-Edghill said the BTMI has started the process of putting tourism marketing staff in the Barbados Embassy in Panama in an effort to ramp up interest in  that market. “The strategy there is then to roll into Brazil [and] we are going to have a presence in Argentina as well. We already are negotiating to have representations in other areas,” he said. “We are going to be very aggressive and we are going to be very tactical in terms of how we go into markets because we have to see the returns.” marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb]]>