“The tourism out-turn (for 2015) was the best on record since 2007, with activity in the sector rebounding to pre-crisis levels.
Tourism receipts grew by an estimated five per cent, with arrivals up by 14 per cent, and all major markets recorded double-digit increases,” noted the Central Bank of Barbados in its economic press release at the start of this year.
We all know the story of Barbados’ tourism resurgence. Back in February this year, “in-house” statistics provided by the Ministry of Tourism suggested that long-stay arrivals grew by almost 14 per cent in 2015 to pass 592 000 last year, up from 521 000 in 2014.
According to Minister of Tourism Richard Sealy, 2015 set a new record, becoming the best-producing year in the history of tourism arrivals in Barbados, surpassing 2007, which had previously set the record with 570 000 visitors. Twenty-fifteen’s arrivals, he noted, surpassed 2007’s by just over three per cent.
Except there’s a twist to this story. Now, let me own up here that I missed this completely, and only learned about it over the past week when a top tourism executive sent a document to me. It was attributed to Wayne Lovell, of Tourism & Economic Research & Analysis Agency. I don’t know the person or his agency, but I am grateful to him for pointing out that the Barbados Statistical Service (BSS) noted that a decision had been taken to add airline crew members overnighting here to visitor arrivals.
When I looked for the statistics publication on the BSS website, all I got was an error message. But Google had a cached version which I was able to see, and here is what it said in the preface:
“…The data for this report was provided by the Immigration Department from the Embarkation/Disembarkation (E/D) cards and the cruise ships’ manifests….As of December 2014, the Immigration Department defined a new classification to allow for the identification of crew members who spend at least one night in Barbados. In light of this new information, the BSS has decided to classify those crew cases as Business/Conference arrivals. This adjustment should therefore be taken into consideration when studying historical trends against current and future purpose of visit statistics for tourist arrivals.”
Further on, it stated that “the most significant growth level was clearly achieved among visitors who travelled to Barbados on business or to attend conferences, which showed positive growth of 49.3 per cent when compared to 2014.”
Table 1 in the Appendix gives us the actual numbers for the Business/Conference segment: 53 951 in 2014, rising suddenly to 80 549 in 2015, an increase of 26 598. It doesn’t say how many of these additional arrivals were airline crew members.
The crew numbers, however, helped increase total 2015 arrivals by just over 72 000 to 591 872, compared with 519 635 arrivals (without airline crews) recorded the previous year. That gives us the almost 14 per cent record-breaking increase.
But there is a deeply ingrained principle in statistics that took me a long time to remember, and it is that you should not compare apples with oranges. Twenty-sixteen including crew members equals apples; 2015 without crew members equals oranges. So somebody needs to put in the crew numbers for the past few years and let us know what our tourist arrivals have been with them included.
It would mean we did better than reported for those past years, but not as well as that 14 per cent increase in 2015 over 2014.
This column being written on the first day we all stayed home and waited for Tropical Storm Matthew to pass, I had nothing much to do since the house was thankfully not leaking, so after scrounging our lunch out of the cans we bought from the supermarket, I went online. Thankfully we did not have a power outage in our corner of St George that day.
I wanted to know why the Immigration Department, as the BSS document stated, might have decided to add overnighting airline crews.
Were they just adopting something other tourism countries were doing?
Well, I could not find any, but my random queries were by no means a comprehensive search.
According to International Recommendations For Tourism Statistics, approved by the United Nations Statistical Commission in February 2008, at paragraph 2.62: “Crews on public mode of transport, either regular or irregular, should be considered as within their usual environment, and thus excluded from visitors.” But “crews on private mode of transport (corporate jet, yacht, etc.) are considered as visitors.”
Singapore says that “international visitor arrivals refer to travellers taking a trip to Singapore whose length of stay is less than a year.” But this excludes, inter alia: “Non-resident air and sea crew (except for sea crew flying in to join a ship).”
Sri Lanka and The Bahamas take a similar view. According to The Bahamas’ Statistical Data on Arrivals, “The arrivals included in the reports here cover foreign air and sea visitors to The Bahamas.…(But) both air and sea arrivals exclude crew members of an airline or cruise ship.”
Sri Lanka says that “the term ‘international tourist’ (overnight visitor) is an international visitor who stays at least one night in a collective or private accommodation in the country visited.” But “to clarify further, the following are excluded from the definition of ‘international visitor’….Crews of ships and aircraft even if they stay for one night or more.”
So far, the only document I found in agreement was from way back, and titled Recommendations On Tourism Statistics – United Nations, New York, 1994. At paragraph 44 it says: “A classification of main purpose of visit (or trip) by major groups is recommended below….For information and guidance to countries, the following types of activities are included under each of the major groups:…6. Other: aircraft and ship crews on public carriers, transit and other or unknown activities.”
Now whether that is still in force, or has been superseded by more recent decisions, I don’t know.
But what I do know is that Barbados is now counting crews as visitors.
