No more off-season: PM pushes expanded tourism experience, food choices

The government is set to continue discussions with restaurant owners to improve Barbados’ culinary offerings, expand late-night dining options and strengthen the year-round tourism experience, Prime Minister Mia Mottley said on Monday.

“We are determined that Barbados must not just sit on its laurels with the kind of culinary experiences that we have in this country,” she said as the Blue Monkey Hotel and Beach Club opened at Paynes Bay. “They are good, but we feel it can be better and even stellar,”

She highlighted concerns about the limits of late-night dining, arguing visitors should be able to find meals at 10 or 11 p.m.

“I’ve had an initial meeting with the owners of restaurants, and I’ve asked the minister of tourism to report back to me, and I intend to meet with them again in August. This cannot be the country where people cannot get a meal at 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock at night. That is not part of the tourism experience that we are bringing to the world.”

The prime minister also called for a wider variety of dining options to accommodate changing visitor markets and support year-round tourism:

“There was a time when we offered far more variety and far more range in terms of times and opportunities than we do now. We need to revisit it, and we need to make sure that we’re capable of accommodating all types of tastes and all types of tourists in terms of dining patterns.

“There are some people who eat early, and there’s some people who naturally eat late, particularly coming from the Latin countries, and Barbados must be able to accommodate visitors because we’ve said that we’re open to all visitors.”

Mottley also called for more personalised service as Barbados continues to attract visitors from non-traditional markets.

“We need to be ahead of the curve, and we need to recognise that hiring a few more people to make service more personal is not taking away from your bottom line, but is in fact reinforcing the business that you have and the ability to retain that business for the future because the service becomes that much more personalised at the same time.”

She said this requires greater investment in digital technology, greener hotels and sustainable tourism practices.

“We need to be investing heavily in the digitisation and the greening of our hotels to ensure that as part of Tourism 3.0, our hotels in truth and in fact reflect the most modern facilitation that we can offer our clients through the digitisation.”
Mottley continued: “The most pleasant and greening of experiences and blooming where necessary such that Barbados remains faithful to our role that we will play in making sure that the climate does not become worse and that the world reflects a place that truly is warming to our spirit such that whether we are working or rejuvenating, we have a sense of calm and a sense of oneness with the environment in which we are functioning.”

Peter George, shareholder and owner of the new hotel’s Amara Restaurant and Blue Bar, backed the prime minister’s view, expressing hope that Barbados can eliminate the traditional distinction between peak and off-season tourism.

He said: “It is our intention to do whatever we can to assist Barbados in no longer having to deal with the vicissitudes of season and off-season, at least the way that we know it from in the past.

“Hopefully there’ll no longer be an off-season at the wide spectrum that we knew before, and Barbados can benefit from the experience of this incredible island 12 months of the year.”

(LG)