Where is Tourism after P.G.I.A. Reopening?

The Philip Goldson International Airport resumed operations for international arrivals on October first, though there were concerns from the Belize Tourism Industry Association about the safety protocols that were being put in place amid the fight against COVID-19.  Flights by United and American Airlines are on schedule with other airlines to soon resume flights to the P.G.I.A.  While the protocols are holding at the airport, it doesn’t mean that tourist arrivals have increased since the grand reopening.  Today we checked in with the private sector organization to get an understanding of where the tourism industry, considering a relaxation of some of the strict measures that were implemented at the time of the reopening.

Stewart Krohn

Stewart Krohn, Vice President, B.T.I.A.

“There’s a consensus that everyone’s doing a good job and the chaos that some people feared has not taken place and the visitors that we have had come to Belize have been pretty satisfied with the process.  Having said that, however, we have to realize that the overall numbers that have come through the airport are very small.  I think we are averaging something like a little bit over seven hundred passengers per week.  Let‘s say that averages out to a hundred a day, and that‘s both returning Belizeans and bona fide tourists, for an average of a little over a hundred visitors per day, it‘s not a great test of our ability.  So I guess the best I can say is that we‘re cautiously optimistic as far as the reopening process has gone.  When it comes to a prediction of will tourists come in November, December, January, February, March, we really don‘t have any sure way of knowing.  Speaking to my colleagues in the hotel business, inquiries are beginning to pick up, reservations are slowly trickling in.  A lot of reservations we‘re getting are from people who have previous reservations for the last six months starting in March and those reservations have been rescheduled, some of them rescheduled once, twice, three times already.  So it’s really hard to get a handle on what we can expect.”