Barbados is trending towards another strong tourism performance in 2026, following on the heels of last year’s record-breaking 727 310 longstay and 817 950 cruise visitor arrivals.
Chief executive officer of Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc (BTMI) Andrea Franklin said the island has already recorded around 214 000 visitors for the first quarter of the year.
“Across all of our markets we are seeing the resilience and the strong performance,” she said, while reporting on Barbados’ tourism performance and plans to travel trade media from around the world at the justended Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association’s Travel Marketplace in Antigua.
Franklin said last year Barbados saw “expanding international airlines” to the destination. “We saw our cruise activity also strengthen, in particular our homeporting activity, as well as our global competitiveness and our connectivity,” she added.
She based her positive projections for 2026 on “double-digit growth coming out of Europe, strong growth out of Canada as well as encouraging signs from the United Kingdom, United States and Caribbean markets.
Air connectivity “remains the cornerstone of our strategy for tourism growth on the destination”, Franklin said, pointing to Minister of Tourism and International Transport Ian Gooding-Edghill’s strategy of expanding airlift into Barbados.
The Lagos, Nigeria airline Air Peace will begin a monthly charter service to Barbados and Antigua next week, a development which the BTMI chief said is the beginning of building awareness and connectivity to the destination.
“We will continue to forge relationships and conversations with other carriers to see how we can be a hub for the rest of the Caribbean from the African continent,” Franklin said.
Quizzed on Barbados’ ability to sustain a direct flight from Africa, she replied: “Barbados may not be able to fill an aircraft to a full flight, but we certainly can use it looking at Barbados as a hub . . . with the connectivity to our neighbouring islands who have all expressed interest in terms of the African market.”
Franklin said Barbados had just opened a tourism office in Nairobi to give the island a physical presence in the African market. She added it will serve the African and Gulf Cooperation Council region – which comprises the Arab nations of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
However, it was noted that seasonality remained an issue for Barbados and for other tourismdependent Caribbean countries, which experience a substantial drop in visitor arrivals during the summer months.
Franklin said it was an issue which Barbados was actively addressing by targeting the Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE) market; pursuing more sports tourism and pushing more summer events and festivals like Crop Over in a bid to generate business to fill the gap.
For the second consecutive year, Barbados will have no cruise ships calling at the Bridgetown Port during the summer, as major cruise lines have redeployed ships to the northern Caribbean and Europe.
However, the BTMI projected summer 2027 will see the Bridgetown Port again busy with cruise ships. (GC)
