We are pleased to hear the Minister’s announcements regarding the upcoming summer promotion. We of course welcome the positive news of promotional support for the tourism industry as well as the airlift initiatives over the coming summer months.
The Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) has been collaborating with our partners at the Barbados Tourism Marketing Tourism Inc., (BTMI) to try to ensure that the industry continues to get the needed attention and impetus for growth.
The planned charter with Bahamas Air offers us the opportunity to address a critical challenge we are currently facing with respect to the cost of airlift from all of our markets including our key United States market. With the advertised flight fares of US$599 return from Fort Lauderdale, commencing in the pre-Crop Over period of July 18 and continuing with the final of five planned flights on August 15, it positions us not only to capture travellers from South Florida, but also those coming from Eastern gateways and other geographic segments which would have previously benefitted from this Fort Lauderdale connection.
There is already interest being demonstrated by Barbadians wishing to exploit these great rates for the return leg and we will be using every channel available to us to promote this to travellers in the
market.
The summer promotion mentioned by our Minister of Tourism will be launched for the post Crop Over period and has a booking window from now until mid-October for persons who are travelling to Barbados during the period ending October 31, which is usually one of the most challenging of the summer.
We anticipate that this promotion will incentivize persons who can benefit from the additional value-added offer of Bds$200 per person to explore the island as the travel vouchers can only be used at attractions, restaurants and other providers. This gives visitors an anticipated six thousand (6,000) service providers to choose from, which will definitely include our BHTA Direct Tourism Services members.
What is especially pleasing is that one of our newest members – Oistins Bay Gardens and numerous other similar vendors and suppliers across the island will also be eligible to participate; which reinforcing to everyone the value that tourism brings and its tremendous multiplier effect.
The information regarding the tax reduction from Minister of Tourism Gooding-Edghill was a reminder of the announcement made during the recent budget speech. As you may recall, the Prime Minister Mottley said then, that the Air travel and Tourism Development Fee for Caricom travel would be reduced by 47% from $US37.50 to US$20 effective July 1 , 2023. This is critical as we seek to rebuild inter-regional travel, an area where we were unfortunately most hard hit from COVID.
With InterCaribbean adding more flights and the recent announcement from Virgin of access to travel within its Grenada and St. Vincent routes to persons interested in journeying to and from these islands from Barbados, we are cautiously optimistic that we are trending in the right direction.
We hope to be announcing partnerships and packages between the BHTA and these Airline entities in the near future. Overall, we are hopeful that we will see improvements over the coming months and that winter 2023/24 will be a strong one.
BHTA Chairman
Renée Coppin