BTB believes tourism industry will recover
Two weeks after the biggest peacetime terrorist attack in modern history, Belize tourism officials are still holding their breath to see just how hard the industry here will be hit. According to Director of Tourism Tracy Taegar, the enormity and unprecedented scale of the acts make it difficult to predict the effects on Belize.
Tracy Taegar, Director of Tourism
“No precedence has been set before for an incident like this, and so it has, and so it’s very difficult to ascertain what the short and long term effects are going to be. We have done a preliminary analysis and it indicates that tourism is down about twenty-five percent up to the end of September. It is obvious to us that the travellers are on a wait and see more, and so we experience very few cancellations and very few new reservations for Belize for the next three months. Even our partners in the U.S., our wholesalers and tour operators have not been able to give us a clear indication of what effect this will have on our tourism industry for travel in the high season. And so, we just keep monitoring the situation from day to day.
We have experienced cancellations and I think the more highly trafficked destinations like San Pedro for example, have received most cancellations. I think people are really afraid because of the cancellation policies. They don’t want to keep their reservations on hold and something happens, the U.S. makes an attack and then they have penalties to pay. At least that’s the indication we’ve been getting from the consumers. So they prefer to cancel their reservations for now, wait and see what happens and then rebook their vacations. I think generally people feel that this region is a very safe region. It’s not a long haul flight, and so there are experts who feel that the Caribbean and Central American are the regions who will most benefit when travel does resume to some form of normalcy. But that is yet to see, we just have to wait and see what reaction we get from the U.S. market.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“However, there is still a lot of people who are maybe a little bit afraid of flying still.”
Tracy Taegar
“That maybe the number one issue. The whole issue of safety in flying has to be the number one thing on people’s mind at this time.”
The major U.S. carriers operating in Belize, Continental and American, have thus far maintained their regularly scheduled flights.
