Chief Executive Officer of the BTMI, William Griffith.
RECORD YEAR EXPECTED
Thu, 09/15/2016 - 12:00am
THE Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI) is projecting that by the end of the year, this country would have surpassed 600 000 long-stay visitor arrivals, setting a new record for such arrivals into this country.
Chief Executive Officer of the BTMI, William Griffith, said if this is achieved, it would be five per cent growth over the 591 000 long-stay arrivals recorded last year, which was an all-time high. He spoke to these figures during a media breakfast yesterday morning at the Hilton Hotel for local and overseas journalists attending the three-day Caribbean Tourism Organisation’s State of the Tourism Industry Conference, which ends on Friday, as he provided an update on the tourism industry in Barbados. Griffith said preliminary results for long-stay arrivals from January to August 31, shows a continued trend of growth, on the heels of last year’s record.
“So far for the year we have achieved 429 914 long-stay visitors and we are trending 5.3 per cent ahead of the previous year. That actually translates to 22 000 increased visitor arrivals so far for the year,” he said.
He indicated this success is being driven primarily by significant growth out of the United States market this year, as a result of increased airlift. At the same time, the Canadian market has been flat, but he said they still consider this an achievement given the challenges Canada has been facing in respect of the erosion of its currency. Despite the performance in that market being flat, Griffith said Barbados is still trending ahead of its competitors in respect of visitors from Canada.
Meanwhile, in terms of Germany, he said there has been a six per cent decline recorded, but he is confident that this will “turn around pretty quickly”, and in the United Kingdom (UK) the market continues to grow, in spite of the referendum vote for the UK to leave the European Union, which it was thought would be harmful to the local tourism industry.
“United Kingdom pleasingly continues to show growth. We are at 2.7 per cent ahead of last year and certainly there’s been a lot of discussion in recent times on Brexit and the impact of the Brexit vote on our business, especially from the UK, but we continue to growth from the UK. And as a matter of fact, I think by year end of 2016 we anticipate a marginal growth of just over two per cent from the UK,” the BTMI official said.
As it relates to cruise arrivals, the BTMI CEO indicated that such arrivals are also on the rise. For the first six months of the year, he said, arrivals are up by 3.8 per cent, for a total of 340 043 passengers. Griffith added that arrivals this year are projected to be an additional 27 000 over 2015. Moreover, he said that as it relates to cruise and stay visitors, they also expect to see an increase recorded, adding that this initiative has netted US $14 million in visitor spend on the island.
Turning his attention to visitor expenditure, Griffith told journalists that according to exit figures from the Caribbean Tourism Organisation for 2015, the island achieved total visitor expenditure of US$867 million, up from the figure recorded in 2014. For the first quarter of this year, he revealed, it has been estimated that Barbados recorded expenditure of US$337 million, a hike of 16.6 per cent more than what was recorded for the same period last year.
“So our winter in terms of spend was quite pleasing… we await the final quarter’s results, but we certainly believe that the trend in spend is really an encouraging one,” he stated. (JRT)