Taxi woes

Coaches operating in the Bridgetown Port are creating quite a bit of competition for taxis there.

Adrian Bayley, President of the Bridgetown Port Taxi Co-op Society Limited, charged that the coaches have cut into a large proportion of their work and are causing them some challenges. The president explained that the transportation business at the Port from as far back as 2003, under a directive from former Minister of Tourism Noel Lynch, was to be split 60/40 between the coaches and the taxis from the two associations operating in the Port. But, he indicated that while that existed for some time, the ratio has now changed considerably.

He raised this concern while speaking to members of the media yesterday on the sidelines of a beach clean-up the taxi operators were undertaking at the beach located behind the Holetown Police Station.

“I would say today it is not 60/40 anymore, I would clearly say it is about 80/20,” he lamented.

Bayley said in essence, the coaches are monopolising the transportation sector at the Port. He explained that not only are they directly involved in day-to-day tours of Barbados, they are still responsible for the transfers to and from the airport and seaport, and they have also started to cut into a niche created by the taxi operators – of giving cruise visitors a more intimate tour of the island, as well as time for shopping and a visit to the beach.

“What our members have done over the years to survive, and it is really unfair to us, we created a basic niche where we would have offered five or 10 passengers, 14 passengers in a ZM vehicle, to do an island tour, shopping and beach. So you would have bind yourself into [these] passengers for three or four hours. Clearly the island tour might be two hours, then you offer them an hour shopping and the beach time was of their own volition,” he said.

Bayley said that in addition to the beach visits, they also gave visitors the opportunity to see a Barbadian sunset. He alluded that while we here might take sunsets for granted, there are many persons living in Europe, for example, who do not get that experience where they reside.

He added, “What we have offered in the evening time is doing a sunset tour where you can take people to the high points in Barbados … and then you bring them down to a beach bar like Surfside, you can take them over to Carlisle Bay and they watch the sunset, they would have dinner and things like that.”

He said while the taxi operators were instrumental in doing these types of tours, those who have the “physical muscle” and direct contact with the cruise ship agents have adopted many of their ideas, and the taxis are now operating at a grave disadvantage. The Co-op president said while it has not pushed any of the taxi operators out of business, it has created some tension among them as the revenue-earning opportunities are limited.

“I remember when I was kid coming up, my grandmother had some fowls in the yard and if you put down a pound of scratch grain for 50 fowls, they can pick at it easily, but if you put down half pound of scratch grain for a hundred fowls, all of them are going to end up fighting. So it would [look] like it is an infighting, but it is not an infighting, it is that we have definitely lost business,” he said.

Bayley, who is a member of the National Cruise Development Commission, created last year to look at cruise development in this country and to help the sector overcome the challenges it currently faces, revealed that this is one of the areas that the Commission has given attention to. He said that Minister of Tourism, Kerrie Symmonds, has given the assurance it will be looked at.

“If we get the physical support from Government, it opens up avenues where you can then get back the work. That is an area we are looking to basically depend on the Minister, so we can have more support coming from Government, so that we can get back a percentage of the work that is owed to us,” he said. (JRT)