2000 tourism figures set record
The final figures are in and, as predicted, the year 2000 was a big one for tourism. Despite the dislocation caused by Hurricane Keith in October and November, bonafide tourist arrivals at the Philip Goldson International Airport totaled a record one hundred and thirty-one thousand, six hundred and thirty-four. The month of December also showed a strong rebound from Keith’s destruction, with arrivals climbing by twelve point one percent over a year earlier. Minister of Tourism Mark Espat says the success is attributable to solid marketing.
Mark Espat, Minister of Tourism
?We had a budget this year of four point six million dollars, this fiscal year for promotion and advertising. And certainly I want to underscore the massive support we get from the private sector who provide us really with the information that we need in order to promote their product whether it?s with expansions to their properties or new services they offer. But certainly, the new investments that we?ve made in television advertising, in print advertising, in getting more brochures and promotional materials out there, attending more tradeshows, is I think the biggest reason for the increase in arrivals to Belize.?
Stewart Krohn
?Can you mention the amount of money that we spent to promote? Do you have an accurate handle on the actual money that comes in? Number one, does that money actually make its way into the country and so do you have a way to measure from year to year what the actual money volume is as oppose to the number of tourists??
Mark Espat
?The Central Bank and our statistical department estimated that in 1999, Belize gathered tourism receipts of about two hundred and twenty-two million dollars, that was up from a hundred and ninety-eight million the year before. We are right now in the process of compiling the figures for 2000, but we certainly expect that it will be significantly up from two hundred and twenty-two million Belize dollars.?
?I will be the first one to tell you that there are leakages in the industry, whether it is the international airline component that doesn?t make it?s way to Belize except for perhaps fuel and salaries and other leakages in the tour operators sector and the hotel sector. We need to work to make sure that more of that two hundred and twenty-two million dollars makes its way to Belize.?
While more tourists than ever are arriving by air, most of them head out to the cayes, Cayo or Placencia to spend their holidays. Belize City profits indirectly from the commerce those areas generate, and also from a growing cruise ship trade.
Mark Espat
?In addition to the fourteen percent increase in arrivals at the PGIA, it is noteworthy that cruise arrivals, which are measured separately, increased from thirty-four thousand or so in 1999 to over fifty-eight thousand in 2000 or a seventy percent increase. We get many, many business opportunities, jobs, economic activities from cruise tourism, the taxi drivers, the artisans, the tour guides, the tour operators, and yes, we are hoping that this year that industry will continue to grow. The projections for 2001 and 2002 are for continued growth and we hope that cruise tourism can continue to complement overnight tourism. But by far and away, overnight tourism, where visitors come and stay with us, is more sustainable than just cruise tourism, where they are day trippers.?
Stewart Krohn
?What is the outlook for 2001 for general tourism? Are we going to see the same level of increase that we had last year??
Mark Espat
?We will make at least the same level of investment and perhaps some additional investments in marketing. We hope that our partnerships this year will be stronger than they?ve been in the past with the airlines, the big tour operators, with the private sector. We hope that we will get an additional flight from somewhere this year perhaps from Atlanta with Delta or some other new flight to Belize. But we expect that this year will be even better than 2000, not just for cruise tourism, for overnight tourism and for the tourism sector on a whole.?
When annual arrivals via land border crossings are tabulated in February, Belize should come very close to reaching the magic number of two hundred thousand overnight tourists for the year.