Whether or not more hotels close their doors in 2011 will all depend on the upcoming winter season.
President of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association, Colin Jordan, told the SATURDAY SUN in a telephone interview that already the fall season (September to November) was “rather weak” and some businesses would just be hoping that the upcoming winter season would “see them through”.
“Some people have been having relatively good fall bookings, and some are still very weak, so it’s a mixed bag. I don’t foresee more closures, but it all depends on how winter does.”
The 130-room Silver Sands Hotel in Christ Church – reportedly hurt by heavy financial losses in the current economic downturn – is closing down at monthend.
Jordan said a significant number of members continued to be “under a lot of pressure” and many businesses were saying that this September was by far worse than the same period last year.
“We have visitors coming to Barbados but they are coming with significantly less money to spend. Even though arrivals are up year to date, the spend is very weak, so there are some significant challenges where the spending is concerned and that is where the pressure is coming,” he stated.
He added too that hotels were not seeing the accustomed revenue because of the “reduced packages” that they were offering as incentives to the guests.
“Hotels are not getting the rates that we would normally get on the market; everybody is discounting or doing value added, which in itself is a cost that the person is not paying for, so you have people in the hotels but their presence is not being felt,” Jordan lamented.
The BHTA president noted a lot of attractions were now offering visitors to “pay for one and the second person at half-price or pay for two persons and the third person free”.
“There are a lot of those deals out there, because everything seems to be very price driven,” he noted.
Jordan said: “As you would recall, in the Central Bank’s report for the first six months of 2010, the reserves had declined by $68 million, so last winter was not a very good one at all, so we’re really hoping that this year will be better,” he stated.
Jordan said the recent trip to Britain by Minister of Tourism Richard Sealy, representatives from the BHTA and the Barbados Tourism Authority had been fruitful and already the two countries had started correspondence on how to “shore up the winter season”.
“We are not sitting down waiting for business to come! Barbados is still a big name in the UK, and the tour operators who drive the business into Barbados are willing to work with us. I think they appreciated the fact that the minister came in person with the BHTA and the BTA, and that gave them the understanding that we are very serious in driving that market again,” he stated.
