Hotel Room Cancellations in Caye Caulker

The COVID cluster that surfaced in Caye Caulker over the weekend has already begun to have a negative impact on tourism. Today, President of the Belize Hotel Association, Alina Saldivar, told News Five there have already been cancellations.  Not only that, but she said that bookings are trickling in slowly, instead of with the frequency that hoteliers in Caye Caulker have been accustomed to seeing in the past.

Voice of: Alina Saldivar, President, B.H.A.

“We definitely have been in contact with our members and we have had some unfortunate feedback that there have been cancellations, yes. Another unfortunate feedback is that this is usually the time when we get excited because we start getting a lot of bookings for the upcoming winter season. So from Thanksgiving right through until the end of March, this is the time when those bookings start to flood in and those are slow in coming. So what is happening is that we might very well still have a good season but everything is happening at the last minute.  The good thing is that it is the slow season, so there are not a lot of tourists on the island. So that’s not a good thing, but it is a good thing (chuckling) when it comes to the situation with the spread of the disease right now.  We were rebounding so beautifully in June and July especially – and then of course – but things naturally started to slow down, I guess because of the slow season, so it’s kind of a relief that this unfortunate situation with the third wave is happening during our slow season. I’m sure we could have had the opportunity to have more tourists if we didn’t have this third wave, so it is rough but this is the time that we’re used to the slow season. Of course, we didn’t need a slow season after having a slow year in 2020.”