A tourism official says that there is not expected to be any long-term fallout from the recent sewage problems on the island’s South Coast.
In fact, Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI), Neville Boxhill, said there appears not even to be any short- or medium-term impact on upcoming arrivals into the island for the winter season. As such, he said the country remains on track this year to achieve six per cent growth on last year, and they have not altered the projections for 2017 either. Nevertheless, he said they have kept in contact with the majority of their partners in the source markets to allay any fears that may arise.
“The response from the tour operators has indicated that they have not been hearing anything from the consumers. I think that while this issue has been a significant one on social media within Barbados, it has not reached that critical mass internationally where it has become so widespread an issue that it is immediately impacting on our forward bookings,” he said.
Boxhill added, “Those hotels which have been impacted have been relatively small and one benefit to that, if there is a benefit to that, is that the smaller hotels tend to have a closer relationship with their clientele. So that makes it easier for them to address almost on a one-on-one basis, than if this had exploded where we would have needed to do a mass market campaign globally in order to address the adverse effect.”
The BTMI official said their hope is that now the remedial measures have been put in place to address the matter, the affected hotels can get in contact with their clientele, many repeat visitors, informing them the problem has been solved and there is no expectation of it occurring again in the future.
Acknowledging that some booking and travel review sites have had cautions up regarding Barbados, he said now the issue has been fixed the BTMI expects the cautions and warning will be removed. Boxhill indicated that the BTMI will be speaking with the administrators of those sites, explaining what the problem was, how it was rectified and that the area is safe to all.
“I think the information relative to the water quality is of particular significance because it demonstrates that even when we had closed the beach that was a precautionary matter, and not the result of poor water quality certainly by international standards. So it is things like that that we will attempt to communicate not in a mass way, but a one-on-one basis with the major decision-makers, such as Trip Advisor, etc.,” he stated. (JRT)