B.T.I.A. Prez and Tourism C.E.O. on Shooting Death of American Tourist in San Pedro

Less than two weeks ago, on New Year’s Eve, American visitor J’Bria Michelle Bowens, from Indianapolis, was vacationing in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye along with her family when she was shot dead. The incident occurred near the Central Park and the nursing student was not the intended target of the shooting. The killing of a visitor at the country’s prime tourist destination went viral and is not without its impact – a few properties reported cancelations in the wake of the shooting death. Today, we were able to get comment from B.T.I.A. President Stewart Krohn and Tourism C.E.O. Nicole Solano on the incident, albeit isolated.

Nicole Solano, C.E.O., Ministry of Tourism & Diaspora Relations

Nicole Solano

“The safety and the security of our tourists – that’s the highest thing on our priority list. Whenever a visitor comes to Belize, their safety is of utmost importance to all of us, to everybody that’s welcoming them. In this situation, that situation, any situation like that – whether it is one or multiple and it is tragic – it has an impact. So, indeed, these things do impact on the tourism industry and we take every single one of them seriously. Immediately, we do a lot of interaction with the police department, with the tourism police; we try from a tourism standpoint to help as much as possible to support the security forces and to make sure that they have as much resources as they can to operate and to monitor and to maintain the safety and security. There will also be impact because every single situation like that, the information is shared and the whole world can hear what is happening and people might become concerned whether or not they are in that situation. The truth is that all destinations face some level of security threat toward travellers. There are isolated incidents that occur in destinations throughout the world. We are no different, but we have to do everything we can within our power to make sure that these kinds of things don’t happen because they do impact significantly on our industry.”

Stewart Krohn

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

“Crime, particularly the very unfortunate and the very horrible shooting at San Pedro is something that is very much on the mind of the industry, but crime is something….the crime situation in Belize didn’t come overnight and it is not going to be solved overnight. But if it was an easy thing to answer, we wouldn’t have any crime. As an industry, we have certainly worked with the police and with the government for years and years on this issue and one crime does not define a situation.”