The Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) has started surveying its accommodation members to determine room availability as flight cancellations linked to the Venezuela situation leave passengers stranded on the island.
BHTA chairman Javon Griffith said yesterday the association had reached out to all of its accommodation members to collect data on available rooms as part of an effort to assist displaced passengers who were grounded in Barbados.
“We have reached out to all of our accommodation members [this morning] for them to fill out a brief survey to give us a firm idea of how many rooms they have available on each calendar night from January 3 to January 10,” he said.
Response
Griffith explained that the information would allow the BHTA to determine how many room nights are available on any given night and to coordinate a response with national tourism and airport authorities.
“So we are giving our members the opportunity to fill that survey out and return it to us so we can then ascertain the number of room nights we have available on any given night,” he said.
“That puts us in a firm position to be able to coordinate with the BTMI [Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc.] and the Grantley Adams International Airport to be able to get the displaced passengers accommodated as soon as possible, wherever possible.”
The move comes amid widespread flight disruptions affecting travel in and out of Barbados, with several passengers unable to leave the island as scheduled.
Griffith said the association’s immediate focus was on those already in Barbados who were now stranded.
“Our priority at this stage remains persons who are already on the ground in Barbados who are displaced due to flights not being able to depart Barbados today (yesterday),” he said.
While acknowledging that flight cancellations in the United States market were likely to have a knock-on effect on hotel bookings, Griffith said the BHTA had not yet started collecting data on cancellations.
“Well, we haven’t requested such information as yet,” he said. “Naturally, because there have been so many cancelled flights in the US market, there will definitely be an impact in terms of cancellations but we have not started to collate that information as yet.”
Griffith also said the association did not yet have firm numbers on how many stranded passengers might be seeking accommodation extensions or rebooking at hotels.
Collecting data
“At this stage we don’t have a fixed number of that. Our team is working on collecting the data at the moment.”
He indicated that more concrete information was expected later in the day once they got responses from hotels.
No timeline had yet been given for when normal flight operations were expected to resume and Griffith said the association would continue to update its members and relevant authorities as information became available.
He also indicated he would provide further updates once the survey results were compiled. (NS)
