Tourist arrivals up
It may not sound like a big increase to those outside the industry, but the Belize Tourism Board and the Ministry of Tourism are celebrating a five point two percent increase in tourist arrivals for the month of March. According to the Ministry, the additional visitors are the result of their latest marketing campaign. News Five spoke with Deputy Director of Marketing for the B.T.B. Tracy Taegar Garcia about the increase and how it was achieved.
Tracy Taegar Garcia, Deputy Dir. of Marketing, B.T.B.
“We’re excited because it’s the highest ever number of tourists arrivals recorded at the Philip Goldson International Airport ever. We’ve never had in any single month that number of increase in tourist arrivals at the airport. So we’re very excited by that.”
Q: “What do you attribute this to?”
Tracy Taegar Garcia
“We attribute it to the emergency marketing campaign, which was funded by the government of Belize, which was very aggressive and it turned around the numbers. For the year we had an overall increase but for the last quarter we saw a decrease in arrivals.
We have over 8,000 inquires because of advertising in consumer magazines and trade magazines that we’ve been advertising it in the last three months.”
Q: “Do you expect that to increase and even intensify?”
Tracy Taegar Garcia
“We hope that it will intensify with our marketing budget for this fiscal which is 2 million dollars Belize.”
According to the Ministry of Tourism, the next phase of the marketing campaign includes advertising on public TV stations in select U.S. cities. Government statistics indicate tourist arrivals at the Philip Goldson International Airport totaled twelve thousand one hundred and thirty.
While the tourism numbers are up, so is the level of discontent at Belize’s largest tourist destination. Residents of San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, have been complaining bitterly of numerous blackouts throughout the island which have caused physical damage and major inconvenience to both locals and tourists. We spoke today to Lynn Young, B.E.L.’s Chief Executive Officer, who, unlike many of his counterparts in other key industries, actually spoke to the issue clearly and directly. Basically Young said that B.E.L. is to blame. It seems that when the island was taken off its own diesel generators and connected directly to the mainland the entire distribution system was upgraded to 22 thousand volts. Problems arose, however, when the insulators on the lines, similar to those used in Belize City, proved vulnerable to San Pedro’s unique climate. Young explained that the dust from the island’s sandy streets has a high salt content, due to the fact that the streets are regularly wet with sea water. This, combined with the heavy salt breeze, coats the insulators with salt, which when mixed with the morning dew, makes for conduction instead of insulation. The result is grounding, sparking and eventually the tripping of circuit breakers. Young apologized to inconvenienced residents and said that perhaps his company should have spent more time testing the system. He says, however, that damage claims are being honored and that within two weeks all the island’s insulators will be changed. And yes, the extensive repair works will cause… more blackouts.
