Chairman of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) Renee Coppin is pinning hopes for improvement in low hotel occupancy levels on Barbados’ ability to attract more airlift into the island.
Reporting to the media on the second quarter performance of the tourism industry on Monday, Coppin noted the island had experienced a near 60 per cent decrease in airlift for the current summer period, with the resulting decline in tourism arrivals and hotel occupancy.
“We in the BHTA are therefore of the firm view that there must be a laser-fused approach to the question of airlift supply for the island, which our numbers point to being 58.3 per cent down on 2019 levels for the comparable period of June to October 2022. We are essentially looking at our summer period and we are seeing that our airlift is down by almost 60 per cent.”
This was a “particularly critical” issue the BHTA chairman said, “given that many of our sister destinations across the region are not reporting similar levels of decline.” (GC)
