The island nation Barbados has established talks with several low-cost carrier charter airlines on setting up a regional route, according to Chairman of Tourism and Marketing Inc (BTMI), Shelly Williams. This is seen as good news for intra-regional travellers.
“In the next couple of months, you may see another charter service, a budget charter service that will be able to take persons to Barbados, Dominica, St Lucia and St Vincent, and those islands that we need to get to be able to do business,” Williams said during a recent radio interview.
In terms of regional travel, LIAT airline, which is currently under administration after struggling for years to make a profit and then dealing with the negative effects of lack of travel due to COVID, has had to curtail its flights to various Caribbean destinations, including Barbados.
“We have had some challenges with LIAT. Right now, there is only one plane operational. We are in talks with private charter providers to see if we can set up and have some planes that we can set up for airlift,” the chairman explained.
She noted that this has attributed to a high cost for regional travel and has had a domino effect on lower-end property bookings.
“We are actively looking. We have engaged with several players and tried to set up support for the ones that are on the ground right now. It is a challenge for all of us. A lot of us rely on regional travel for business purposes,” she stated.
“Normally what would drive business to those properties are festivals and sporting events and other things like that, and because of COVID we had none. The cost of an airline ticket has maybe ostracised a certain type of traveller and, on the other hand, we are having villas and luxury markets saying that they don’t even have enough villas to satisfy the demand,” she concluded.
