Thursday, August 6th, 2015. BMG: Statistics show that the tourism industry is growing in the Caribbean, with various countries showing large increases in visitors, but Belize surprisingly has had a decrease in visitors, especially from Canada.
Arrivals from Canada to Belize have declined by 11% and arrivals from the USA have also declined by 1.4%, while Barbados has managed to attract 28.4% more Canadian visitors than usual, for the first half of this year.
The BTB partially attributes the decline in Canadian visitors to Belize, to the fact that Air Canada flights go directly to Barbados but don’t come to Belize, which the BTB is currently trying to change.
BTIA President, Osmany Salas, in an interview with the media, weighed in on the matter, saying that in Belize we need to focus on one specific type of tourism that we want to develop. Salas said that in previous years, we have been pushing overnight tourism but now that is being hampered by developments in the cruise tourism sector.
He ended his statement by asking what kind of tourism focus we want for our country.