Two airlines have announced extra flights from the American states of New Jersey and Massachusetts from as early as this week, Tourism and International Transport Minister Ian Gooding-Edghill announced on Monday.
And the growing passenger airlift has prompted the minister to declare a need for more accurate statistics on accommodation levels to plan for rising demand.
United Airlines will begin flying daily out of Newark from Thursday until May 1 while JetBlue’s service out of Boston is to move to twice weekly, he told the House of Assembly.
The United service brings an extra 9 845 seats into the island and with the additional JetBlue flights the figure rises to 12 545 seats, said the tourism minister, signalling the airline’s “confidence in Barbados”.
As the House of Assembly continued Monday’s Estimates debate on the appropriation to his ministry, Gooding-Edghill said: “If we can maintain the inventory, plus the 65 000 coming, already you would see that we are looking at about 77 000 seats.”
But, when probed by the Opposition Leader, Ralph Thorne about the ideal occupancy level of the 77 000 seats, Gooding-Edghill suggested that answer would be subjective, given the lack of accurate and up-to-date information covering accommodation levels in properties apart from traditional direct hotel bookings.
Gooding-Edghill said: “The question is, do we have the carrying capacity in Barbados to drive what we are doing in terms of air seat capacity – accommodation – in Barbados? We do, and oftentimes you would hear in the news reports [with] people saying, ‘Hotels aren’t full’ or ‘We are at 50 per cent’. Truth be told, we have to get better at forecasting, and we have to get better at recording actual occupancy in hotels.
“Oftentimes you hear somebody say, ‘Well you know business is down’ but you don’t get the information. What we have to do now is to move to a platform where occupancy is reported either to the Barbados Statistical Service or some other independent body, so that you can get a feel for where you are.”
Amid efforts by the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI) and the industry to attract visitors, especially during historically slow months, the tourism minister emphasised the need to have accurate accommodations information on file.
“We have to account, not only from the traditional accommodation sector and hotels, but we also have… Airbnb… Vrbo and other platforms that provide a booking engine for people to come to Barbados. As I walk around Barbados and people congratulate the BTMI and the ministry and myself for the work we have done, they would say, ‘Look at the beaches, when you go to the beaches they are crowded, when you go into a restaurant you can’t get a booking.’
“[Visitors] are staying someplace, and they are staying oftentimes not only in the traditional accommodation sector, but like I said in the Airbnb-Vrbo type. We have to find a way to account for inventory at those properties.”
(SB)
