I HAVE OFTEN wondered what was the “secret sauce” which Billy Griffith brought to the tourism industry when he returned home – after years making his name in the industry abroad – to take up the reins of the new Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc (BTMI).
His ascendancy in August two years ago may have been greeted with some raised eyebrows as Griffith was not a well known tourism personality here, but after only six months on the job, the numbers came in and showed that Barbados had achieved a slight increase in long term arrivals for the year 2014 – most of them in the last two weeks of December – after several years of decline.
Last year, under Griffith’s tenure for a full calendar year, our tourism sector roared home with an unheard-of 14 per cent increase in long stay arrivals. We were back.
Now for the first quarter of this year, we had another increase of over seven per cent.
Whatever BTMI and its tourism partners were doing, I sure could not tell.
It was only after I scanned through the first quarter report on visitor expenditure, done for the BTMI by the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) that I got a glimpse of the secret recipe.
The strategy being followed is to make Barbados a better value destination, so that the traveller can spend less per day on everything. Thus we will attract more visitors who can also afford to stay a little longer. At least, it seems the CTO figures support this idea.
So, it might have been the BTMI’s plan all along to remake Barbados into a value destination. And perhaps more importantly, to let it be known to the world that we are no longer, metaphorically-speaking, the Concorde destination.
Although I know nothing about marketing, I would guess that this is much easier said than done, because when you have been perceived as the rich man’s playground for so long, moving to a value proposition can suggest that you are either having a fire sale or will reduce your product’s quality to make ends meet. None of that has happened. And the rich are still coming anyway.
A few facts from the CTO survey will follow, but note first the BTMI’s admission that there was “a decline in the average daily spend of 5.6 per cent . . . in the first quarter of 2016.”
The CTO report shows a 20 per cent overall increase in visitor expenditure in Barbados during Q1 2016 compared to the same period last year. This was achieved through a 14.9 per cent increase in average length of stay per visitor and a total growth of 7.4 per cent in visitor arrivals. These factors compensated for the decline in the average daily spend, and in fact brought in US$50 million more.
Griffith buried the lead in his brief comment accompanying the numbers. The survey result “makes the role of the BTMI and our partners at the Barbados Tourism Product Authority (BTPA) and the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) so important in creating more exciting and compelling ways for visitors to spend their money on the island,” he said.
My translation: “Let’s keep trying to give people better value for their money, and they will continue to visit us.”
Patrick Hoyos is a journalist and publisher specialising in business. Email: [email protected]
