The imminent closure of the Silver Sands Resort has come as a blow to the Barbados Hotel & Tourism Authority (BHTA).
President of the BHTA, Colin Jordan, in a telephone interview yesterday told the WEEKEND NATION that the hotel was one of the major “selling points for Barbados”.
He said while it was the “owner’s prerogative” to make those types of decisions, the closure of the 130 rooms out of the room stock of nearly 6 000, spread across 200 properties would be a great loss.
Jordan said that the long-standing hotel located on lush grounds in Christ Church, was one that was very well known on the market and offered a good opportunity for the tour operators to sell more rooms than possible at a smaller hotel.
He said however, that the increased criminal activity in the area, had also put some pressure on the hotel, and how tour operators viewed the property.
“Obviously we don’t want to see hotels closing and we will do all we can to further mitigate that, but the owners are the ones who decide when they can’t go any further,” he noted.
Jordan lamented that the last year-and-a-half had been extremely rough on members of the BHTA, many of whom had had to sit down and make critical decisions.
He said while the Tourism Industry Relief Fund (TIRF) had been set up to assist hotels in meeting some of their costs, while the hotels kept employees in their jobs, the fact was that the claims had exceeded the fund by far.
“While the total fund was $25 million, claims submitted by tourism businesses was in excess of $80 million, so when persons received money from the fund, it would have only been a fraction of what they had applied for. What needs to be made clear is that the fund was set up to hold employment and we think that is a very noble position.
“For the entire year last year, we held employment, so where hotels under normal circumstances would have laid off people, they didn’t, but we had cost structures that were higher than we would have had under normal circumstances given the level of business,” he said.(CT)
