Bajans travelling despite hard times

THE GLOOMY ECONOMIC climate is not stopping Barbadians from taking to warm skies and sun-kissed shores this summer.Some travel agents have told the SATURDAY SUN that many locals were induced by favourable airfares this year, the result of increased competition in the airline industry on some North American routes.Separate telephone interviews conducted with representatives of Going Places Travel, Value Vacations Travel & Tours, Indar Weir Travel Centre and The Travel House Inc. indicated that Barbadians popularly chose North America and Europe and tended to bypass the Caribbean.Basil King, manager of Going Places booking centre in Lower Estate, St Michael, said, “There is no huge fall-off in bookings for summer. There is quite a lot of European travel. People are going to London and then going on to cruises in the Mediterranean, in addition to traditional North American travel.”He noted that bookings at his office appeared to be a balance between visits to friends and family and holiday packages that included airfare, hotel accommodation and transportation on the ground.“I don’t think this summer will be any worse than it was last year. I think it will be quite similar,” King said.Managing director of Value Vacations, Denise Nichols, said vacationers were headed to “Toronto, New York, Miami, London, but not a lot of them are going to other parts of the Caribbean. Now the flights are so full that you can hardly get anything booked”.“I think the decline in Caribbean traffic has been affected by high airfares. People don’t seem to want to pay as much money to travel in the Caribbean when they can pay the same or less to go outside of the region. “And the airfares to some parts of North America are cheaper than in previous years because of the competition between Jet Blue and American Airlines to New York and West Jet and Air Canada to Toronto. The competition has stimulated the market,” she emphasised.Meanwhile, Indar Weir, managing director of Indar Weir Travel, indicated that travel consumption was not usually determined by mere cost, but by the value that consumers felt they got in exchange of their expenditure.“Economic challenges only get in the way when people don’t get value for their money. There was some reduction in prices and people grabbed it,” he said, adding that through his bookings, their journeys took them mainly to “New York, Miami, Canada, and the United Kingdom”.Weir also pointed to a “rapid emergence” of Caribbean cruise travel.Further, general manager of The Travel House, June Clarke said, “Just yesterday I met with a group that is going to Disney,” as she made the point that two group packages for holidays in Disney World offered by the Travel House this summer were fully booked, and some travellers to that destination had made individual bookings to get there.