New President of the Barbados Hotel & Tourism Association (BHTA), Colin Jordan, gave an overview of the tourism industry in a recent question and answer session with the Sunday Sun.
Sunday Sun: What is the current state of the tourism industry?Jordan: At this point our arrivals are up; I think a little over three per cent, but for the vast majority of the hotels the yield is down in terms of the revenue that we are getting from our guests.This is due to a number of factors. People are staying shorter periods of time, but significantly those who come are also spending less. This is up to about the middle of August.September and October look a little slow at this point. People are booking so late that even though it looks slow, we are not sure if it is going to be slow going forward.Many hotels already have some bookings from repeat guests, but we don’t really have an idea about where fall or the upcoming winter is going to end.The industry is such now, that it is difficult to call even a month out.
Sunday Sun: What is the state of the hotel plant?Jordan: A number of hotels are closed for renovations, but I don’t think, given the state of people’s cash flow, that we are going to see major renovations [except for Elegant]. But people are still trying to make their properties bright for the winter.
Sunday Sun: Are there any new hotels coming on stream for this winter season?Jordan: I think the Marriotts Courtyard started to advertise for staff, and my understanding is that they are trying to open for winter. That would be the only new product that we are aware of.
Sunday Sun: The executive assistant vice-president of the BHTA has been commenting on the desire to have more local produce available for the hotel sector. Can you speak on that?Jordan: It is difficult for a restaurant to have say five or six suppliers for tomatoes, for example, and you call and all don’t have (tomatoes). So these businesses prefer to deal with consolidators.Work with farmersI think what needs to happen is that the consolidators need to work with farmers. I think there needs to be a good relationship between the intermediaries and the farmers, so that if a hotel or restaurant has two or three intermediarieswho they go to, they can work it out that if A does not have carrots, then C has when that product is needed.Hotels and restaurants do not import food; we go to the consolidators or the intermediaries. I do not know of any hotels that import vegetables. We buy from local suppliers like SBI and Brydens, etcetera. So I think they would have to work with farmers to solve the problem.
Sunday Sun: What is the BHTA doing for training and upgrading of skills in the industry?Jordan: We do not do a lot of mass training like we used to. What we have been concentrating on is encouraging our members to do training. In the last year our emphasis has been on the Performance-Based Incentive Scheme. Training is a significant component to that and we have done a lot of training where that is concerned.That training involves customer service and cost saving, efficiency, productivity etcetera. That programme has only been happening on a pilot basis, but once we roll out the Performance-Based Incentive Scheme throughout the industry, first in the accommodations sub-sector, then a lot of training is going to be happening as part of that programme.We have also been doing continual training in the environmental area. We train green teams. A lot of individual hotel properties would also have done specific customer training.
Sunday Sun: What are the BHTA’s plans for the sustainability of the industry? Are there any special educational programmes planned?Jordan: My view is that if you are going to have a sustainable industry, if the industry is going to last past my generation and my children’s generation and not suffer the same fate as sugar, then the public must know and must buy into the importance of the industry right now.It can be destroyed if the people who need to carry it on do things that are inimical to its interest. But the buy-in can’t be forced. We can’t insist that people smile etcetera. That’s fake. What we are trying to do is develop a programme or campaign where we can share with the public, through the media, all the information that is necessary for them to make good informed decisions, in terms of tourism’s contribution to GDP.The BTA is a marketing organisation. Given that we are made up of busines organisations, the sustainability is for business and country by extension. We want to reach schoolchildren . . . . I think if we put our heads together – that is, the tourism practitioners and the education officials – that we can come up with something to either start or intensify the tourism education in schools.We have not put the programme together yet, but we do have some ideas in terms of its elements.
The visits to the media houses were really to ask them to buy into the principle that they work with us when we launch and roll out the campaign.
