Where You Going This Easter?
Land borders are still closed and those traditional vacation trips to tourism destinations in Mexico are off the table. But as we found out today, Belizeans are taking advantage of the great deals to increase domestic tourism, so much so that some popular areas across the country are completely booked out for next week.
Duane Moody, Reporting
Time is running out for you to book with hotels and resorts across the country as the Easter holidays are a little over a week away. And from what we found out, resorts in top tourism destinations in the south are fully booked.
Ted Tejada
Ted Tejada, President, Belize Hotel Association
“Surprisingly, fifty percent of them are fully booked for the Easter. It’s a long awaited thing that we have been waiting for. All the ones in Hopkins, all the hotels in Placencia…most of them are full. The ones in San Pedro are telling me they have ten or eleven rooms available, but I am sure that before the Easter, they are going to be full. So I am encouraging Belizeans, don’t want until the end of this week to make your reservation. If you are planning to travel for the Easter break, you’ve got to call now. During this time, they are also venturing into the mountains; they are going to Mountain Pine Ridge, they are going into Cayo area, going to the archaeological sites. So I think Belizeans are seeing where is the best deal. So we have encouraged our hoteliers to extend your best deal right now and this is the time to capitalise. The numbers do taper down after the Easter, but at least for this week, we are going to feel the pre-COVID numbers that we saw last year 2019.”
Belizeans love travelling to the cayes for the extended holiday and there are already increased scheduled runs for water taxis. Chairlady of the Caye Caulker Village Council, Seleny Villanueva Pott says that rooms are quickly being filled.
Seleny Villanueva-Pott
Seleny Villanueva-Pott, Chairlady, Caye Caulker Village Council
“The more high end hotels are booked out for the weekend. I know of maybe three or four that are really filled up. A few others are at about eighty percent and then we have the lower end at fifty percent and others are saying they are only doing walk-ins for maybe two nights or more. They are saying that they don’t want to fill up the rooms this time; they want to do only fifty percent occupancy rate because of the COVID. But we are beginning to see more life on the island.”
It’s exactly one year since the tourism industry was shut down as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic; March twenty-fourth, 2020 was the final day tourists were allowed to return to their countries of origin through the Philip Goldson International Airport. Since then, domestic tourism has been the lifeblood of the industry.
Ted Tejada
“Many hotels were completely closed. Up to today, we have five hundred and three hotels that have completed their gold standards who can operate and receive guests and we encourage every hotel to complete their gold standards. We had been lobbying for many things; that the curfew is lifted from eight to ten, that they allow servicing for restaurants and the government has been working with us. At this moment, Belizeans is not ready to go outside of Belize or Belizeans to go to Chetumal or Cancun because we don’t know how they are controlling the virus over there. We know that we are doing a great job in Belize; we have very limited numbers. So we thought, why don’t we maintain the borders closed until after Easter if anything and open it after Easter only for international tourists. The government has listened to us and surprisingly, it’s paying dividends; the hotels in Belize are full. And if you look at it for the first time, it’s going to be a record number of Belizeans actually saying in hotels in Belize.”
Tejeda and Villanueva Pott, however, are asking Belizeans to keep safe and practicing social distancing even as they are out celebrating the Easter holidays.
Ted Tejada
“What we do encourage, even though we are travelling, the numbers are very low, we must abide by the rules – social distancing, cleaning of your hands, wearing of masks. These are things that we must abide if we are going to return back to where we were 2019.”
Seleny Villanueva-Pott
“We’ve been in consultation from last week with the police and we know for sure we will have extra police for next weekend. I’ve been told right off the bat there will be no question that we will be having extra police and I said no problem. I don’t know what crowd we should anticipate, but I believe we should prepare by all means. We will have coast guard on standby and I know Belize Port Authority will be doing their normal water surveillance around the area.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
