Tourism recovering from Keith

Belize’s Tourism season usually begins with the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving, which was celebrated a week ago. With San Pedro and Caye Caulker, two of Belize’s biggest destinations, still recovering from Hurricane Keith, there have been some questions about the prospects for continued strong growth in the industry. Minister of Tourism Mark Espat, however, expressed confidence that the wrath of Keith will prove to be a very temporary setback.

Mark Espat, Minister of Tourism

“In San Pedro and Caye Caulker power and communication are almost one hundred percent restored. We saw a thirty percent drop in tourism in October, but that is expected as we have thirty-four percent of our rooms on those two islands. This month, that figure has been reduced significantly; I think we are only down one percent the first ten days of the month. I’m confident that we’re going to have a better tourism season this year than we had last year and Keith would have had no medium or long term impact on our growing tourism industry.”

Espat says that by the end of the year he’s expecting all tourism services on both islands to be fully operational. A significant portion of the October and November lost bookings at San Pedro and Caye Caulker were taken up by Placencia.