New way

InterCaribbean Airways boss suggests adjusted tax system for regional travel

By Jenique Belgrave

A regional airline executive believes the introduction of a two-tier tax system will help reduce the high cost of travel in the Caribbean.

Agreeing that government taxes on airline tickets are a significant burden on travellers, founder of InterCaribbean Airways Lyndon Gardiner suggested that a new structure with a different scale of taxes for regional and extra-regional travel would make a significant difference.

“As islands, even though we’re apart, we’re very close, and as you can see, every summer with all these carnivals and festivities, we travel to the other islands. And I think that if we have reasonable airfares that include reasonable taxes, that will serve as a catalyst for increasing the volume of traffic. And so, instead of having $100, if you had $30, or $40, or $20, then more people would be able to travel, and they’d be able to travel more frequently,” he said.

In an exclusive interview with Barbados TODAY, Gardiner pointed out that post-COVID-19, many airlines had been faced with increased operational costs.

He said that InterCaribbean has been seeking ways to reduce the costs being passed on to the customer.

“As it relates to the actual cost of the ticket, after COVID there has been a significant number of increases all over the place. You know, we’ve tried as much as possible to hold those costs down, meaning that we look for ways

– in this case for us, a more efficient younger aeroplane that can fly more hours with fewer issues. And there are several steps that were taken to ensure, first of all, reliability, but second of all, that we remain economically viable as it comes to what our final product offers,” Gardiner said.

As the Caribbean struggles with intra-regional airlift, international airline Virgin Atlantic launched its first-ever island hopping service in June, linking Barbados to Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Saying that competition is healthy, Gardiner noted that while Virgin would be bringing visitors from other international countries, the new flights would impact the regional carriers.

“They obviously have a much bigger aeroplane. They already go to the destinations for other reasons, like picking up people and taking them across the Atlantic. And whilst I’m a fair-minded person when it comes to markets and what markets are able to deliver, every passenger that doesn’t go with us or one of the other regional carriers creates an extra hardship for us in terms of meeting our financial targets for the business going forward,” the airline executive said.

jeniquebelgrave@barbadostoday.bb