Dark days

Dark clouds appear to be looming over Barbados’ tourism next year, with predictions of more hotel closures, a drastic reduction in the number of cruise ship calls and significant fall-off in the number of visitors from the island’s major source markets.
And the hotel sector is calling for speedy Government action to avert the doom.
In a gloomy picture painted yesterday by the Barbados Hotel & Tourism Association (BHTA) at its fourth quarterly meeting at Hilton Barbados, BHTA?president Colin Jordan warned of a “crisis” in the cruise industry and said he was “amazed with the sloth that seems to characterize the approach of policymakers to the situation”, while prominent hotelier Gordon Seale warned of “substantial problems that must be dealt with right away”.   
Seale pointed to the plight of some South Coast hotels and a few others on the West Coast, which he said faced certain closure next year unless Government intervened and gave some assistance.
 Executive vice-president of the BHTA, Sue Springer, presented data indicating possible negative prospects for Barbados’ tourism from the major traditional source markets of Britain and the United States, owing to the impact of the global economic crisis on both countries, as well as the effect of the Air Passenger Duty and the 2012 Olympics on tourism from Britain.
Read the full story in today’s DAILY NATION.