Government Eyes New Flights Amid Dip in Visitor Arrivals

Tourism figures have seen a decline in recent weeks despite a spike in the early part of the year.  The first quarter saw January and February with record breaking numbers in tourist arrivals.  The following three months, however, saw a decline in figures with June stabilizing.  It is the hope of the Belize Tourism Board that there will be new airlift routes into the country.  According to Minister of Tourism, Anthony Mahler, the government has been taking into account the global events that could hamper travel and tourism.  He noted, however, that the Mexican market is seeing growth which could benefit Belize’s tourism.  

Chester Williams, CEO, Ministry of Transport: “I can assure the Belizean people that myself and my minister and our team here at the ministry were working diligently to make sure that we upgrade the services that our commuters are currently getting at our terminals and on the buses. While yes we don’t control the type of buses that the operators are using. What we do control is to make sure that the buses that are being used meets a minimum standard and so we’re working on that through the transport board again. The bus operators have been told what we expect of them when it comes to the buses that are being used to carry passengers across this country. I have listened to the comments of people on the talk shows and one of the greatest things that they spoke about was why are we improving the terminal setting, looking at aesthetics and not building a new terminal per se. Again, we have to make baby steps. We have to start somewhere. Building a new terminal will take about three to four years. Does that mean that we’re continue to allow our women to sit on a six-inch metal slab for hours waiting for a bus? Does that mean that we must leave our people coming to the terminal and wondering  what is the bus schedule?  So to them I say that while I do understand where they’re coming from, it is still good to make little progress that is going to enhance the experience of the commuters when they go to the terminal.”

Currently, the two major tourism categories are overnight and cruise.  According to Minister Mahler, the disparity between the two is significant and is a factor that the ministry is assessing.  Additionally, he notes that they are also looking at the standards of the hotel rooms available across the country.

Anthony Mahler, Minister of Tourism:“We have 11,000 properties with 11,000 rooms and I showed it yesterday on a slide more than half of the rooms wouldn’t be considered export ready for an international guest. More than half and so that has been our focus like I said akin to building airlift and to some degree focusing on trying to get a cruise terminal so that we can start to grow the cruise numbers in a sustainable way as well. Even though our focus has been overnight for the most part we believe that the industry has to go through another metamorphosis to ensure that we can compete with other destinations. There’s a massive disparity in terms of visitor spend, in terms of revenue generation so if you really look overnight generates about 92% of the revenues compared to cruise. For example Noh Hot Chen cave or what we call Cave’s Branch or Jaguar Paw the vast majority of visitors who go there are cruise and that’s the biggest destination for NICH or for archaeology and so that helps generate the necessary revenues for the other sites to be to be unkept.”