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Last night you heard from the independent tour operators who are dissatisfied with the system of operation in the Tourism Village. The President of the Fort George Tourism Zone Tour operators and Taxi Union, Arton Bowen told us that the freelance tour operators aren't getting a fair share of business because the pre booked tour operators are the only ones benefiting. Today we spoke with the Director of Destination Planning and Cruise at the BTB Valdemar Andrade and he told us that it's not the system at all – in fact he says that the tour operators agreed to this system. Andrade told us it all about the conduct of tour operators on site. He gave us an overview of the system and how it works in the favour of both pre booked and independent tour operators.

Valdemar Andrade - Director of Destination Planning and Cruise

"The main purpose of the standard operating procedure is we have divided up the gates to allocate people where they do business best, where they would get their better customers from at the end of the day. So at gate 1, we have pre-booked operators, at gate 2 we have independent operators, which is the taxi and tour guide association, presently Mr. Arton Bowen. And at gate 4 we have a mixture of independent and taxi operators because of the share numbers of people. The operations occur where pre-booked people, some people who have booking online, they come out of gate 1 - normally they would come out of gate 1. They call for an operator, which ever tour operations and our dispatchers guide them to that operator. If they are just a walk out, then they are re guided to gate 2 so that the independent operators have a chance to sell them a tour. In general terms, all walkouts are to go to gate 2 but since we have implemented this system, a lot of people that are walkouts were coming out of gate 1. So we have made some adjustments to the standard operating procedures allowing the people from terminal 2 - the independent operators to have a rotation at gate 1 so that they are able to get their guests. The walkouts or to have access to those people. One of the biggest issues that we have is that the guests satisfactions surveys for Belize have shown that we have marquee tours, so people come here to take tours. So most of the people who go on tour, we have high ratings on those. But the guest experience for the city and for people who walk out is poor - because of this bombardment of operators and guides that are trying to sell a tour. So this is what we try to manage but at the end of the day it comes down to individual behaviour and how we manage the standard operating procedures at the end of the day."

Andrade told us that they have met with the tour operators and have set up various training sessions. In terms of the situation with terminal 1, Andrade says BTB has no control over the doors being locked and that it might have been as a result of poor conduct of tour operators or security reasons on the part of FSTV.