Tourist arrivals continue to rise

The Belize Tourism Board is proud to announce that continuing on the trend set earlier in the year tourist arrivals are up. In a press release BTB reported that arrivals at the Philip Goldson international Airport for the month of April showed an increase of 37.4% over the same period in 1999. Last April, 8,420 visitors arrived at the PGIA while last month, that number jumped to 11,566. But it is not only the airport that has been busy. BTB reports that for the first 4 months of this year there has been an almost 200% increase in the arrival of cruise ship passengers, to over 42,000. According to BTB’s Shakira Oxley, they credit the increase to proactive policies by the public and private sectors.

Shakira Oxley, Senior Marketing Officer

“Well there are a number of different marketing initiatives that we have undertaken together with the assistance of the private sector, ongoing ones as well as new ones that we believe attributed to the increase of tourist arrivals over the past few months.”

“Our efforts has to include the efforts of the private sector as well. Because the tourist industry as you know includes a number of different services as well and private sector is a major part of that. Private sector initiatives have come in the form of different ads, assistance with, for example during the low season they would tend to offer different specials to encourage more traveling, increase different products as well as rooms and tours and things of that sort.”

Nicole Usher, BTB’s Director of Marketing and Public Relations, says concentrated investment by all parties in the industry can continue to produce positive results for tourism and the entire nation of Belize.