Tourism Minister pleased with performance
Visitor arrivals have reached record levels in 2016 and even at the start of 2017, visitors have been seen in their numbers around the island enjoying the best which this country has to offer.
Minister of Tourism and International Transport, Richard Sealy, is pleased that as tourism arrivals continue on an upward trajectory, so too is visitor spend.
Just last week, Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Freundel Stuart indicated that 2016 was another record year for long-stay visitor arrivals, with some 610 000 coming to these shores last year as compared to 592 000 in 2015. Minister Sealy, in a recent interview with The Barbados Advocate, said that the country is definitely trending in the right direction, and in respect of visitor spend, he said that its growth is also “quite significant”, considering that the United Kingdom is still our major source market and the “pound is still a little soft”.
“But of course the US has been seeing the strongest growth and the US dollar is strong now, so as they say what you lose in the swing you gain in the roundabout. We have tremendous commitment from our partners in terms of airlift. Air Canada is boosting its seat count; JetBlue, Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, all of our major airline partners for our major source markets are working with us and that is translating into increased arrivals. It is no surprise then that we are starting 2017 extremely strong and expect that we will have another record year this year as well,” he said.
Minister Sealy made the comments as he added that tourists coming to Barbados can rest assured that they are visiting a destination that is safe.
“Barbados is promoted and correctly so as a very safe and secure destination, it is one of the things that brings people here and brings them back. If you talk to our repeat visitors about what they love about Barbados the most, they will talk about the friendliness of our people, but they will also talk about safety and security. Being able to move around, being able to walk around, being able to drive yourself from place to place and we have to continue to make sure that remains the case,” he said.
The tourism minister made the point as he noted that crime against tourists in Barbados is extremely low. And he said that concerted efforts are being made to ensure that that this remains the case. (JRT)
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