7 News Belize

Regional Tourism Growing, Why is Belize Not?
posted (August 5, 2015)

And while the Sargassum is smothering beaches from Placencia to Playa Del Carmen to Port of Spain – tourism numbers in the Caribbean are generally going up. Figures from the Caribbean Tourism Organization show that countries like Barbados, Cuba, Trinidad, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Aruba are showing strong tourism growth at the end of June. Belize, though, is showing a small downturn. The BTB attributes that to a decline in arrival from Canada – which is down 11%, but the figures also show a decline in the arrivals from the USA, which is down 1.4%. The experts say that is due to a weaker Canadian dollar – but that dollar is working just fine in Barbados which has the same exchange rate as Belize and saw a 28.4% increase in Canadian guests in the first half of 2015.

Of course, they have Air Canada flying into their airport – which the BTB is trying to get to come to Belize. But that's just at the discussion phase – so what's making Belize tourism contract when Central America and the Caribbean are growing? That's what we asked the President of the BTIA on Saturday – holding to the BTIA line, he used the opportunity to take a shot at the cruise tourism sector:…

Jules Vasquez

"Central America is generally on a great uptick, maybe as much as 4%. So then if the rain is falling on everyone's house, why is it not falling as abundantly here?"

Osamany Salas - President, BTIA

"You know I would offer than in Belize we need to focus, to be clear as to the type of tourism we want to promote for this country. We have over the years been promoting and pushing over night tourism but recently they have been major developments in a new cruise ports. We heard discussion about other ones coming online. I think that is an area that Belize needs to be clear about. What type of tourism focus do we want for our country?"

The BTIA represents principally overnight tourism interests.

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