Belize Hotel Association Looks at New Ways of Attracting Visitors Here

Today the Belize Hotel Association held its Annual General Meeting at the Best Western Belize Biltmore Plaza Hotel. It provided a moment for its members in the hotel, accommodations, service, and hospitality industries to discuss how the past year went for them and how they want to steer the next year ahead. President of the association, Reynaldo Malik told News Five that there’s a whole new aspect to tourism that those in the hotel industry are looking at as a marketing tool for visitors.

Reynaldo Malik

Reynaldo Malik, President, Belize Hotel Association

“In 2022, it referenced to the revenue, the total revenue that overnight tourism generated. We did already exceed 2019 total revenue numbers. So from that perspective, we’re doing well. But that’s, uh, we, there is heightened ADR, or the ADR, is much improve since 2019, but that’s as a result of revenge travel that has been taking place for the last 18 months, so to speak, in the industry. We pretty much figured that that revenge travel is coming to an end, and what we’re kind of drifting into is more of a phase of people are just I want to do no I don’t want to put off things for later on, so it’s changing phases a little bit but whichever phase we’re in it still bodes well for Belize in 2023 and 2024 is starting to look pretty well as well The central point of today’s AGM is talking about not necessarily an introduction, but really, a pivoting away from where we just sold the rooms as the primary attraction and that beach and the sun and the sea as the primary things that we sold. We’re pivoting away from that and getting into more of immersion travel, which is where we’re selling the experience, or experiential travel is the other term that you’ll probably hear used most commonly. What that is, is that now we’re selling what we have – the things that differentiate us from the competition. So everybody in the Caribbean, Mexico, Costa Rica, they all have the same thing. Sun, sea, sand, right? But then there’s Belize and we have sun, sea, sand. We have the longest living barrier reef. We have the great blue hole, Maya temples, rain forests, Jaguar and marine preserves, rice and beans, you know, we have food, we have culture, we have people. These things are unique to us.”