The Belize Hotel Association today held its bi-annual general meeting. As the lead advocacy group for the overnight sector, the BHA often has a lot to say about being crowded out by the expansive, sometimes ungainly cruise tourism sector. But today, Minister of Tourism Godfrey Smith assured the BHA membership that the overnight sector is the mainstay of the industry but he conceded that they need something to kick them over to that other level.
Hon. Godfrey Smith, Minister of Tourism
“Something there simply prevents the hoteliers from moving to the next level. You will hear persistently the issue of low occupancy and competitiveness. I agree with all of that. We accept that somehow it is not growing to where we want it to be. We are not filling our rooms, we are not recouping our investments; something else needs to happen. We all say look how wonderful things are, we’ve grown since 1998, we post annual growth but there are difficulties so you need to move beyond that particular threshold. It is my considered view that that extra force must come from the government of Belize.
So obviously not just enforcement will do. We have to find what kind of force is necessary and in looking at that kind of force, I humbly submit to you that what we might term the critical mass provides the answer. It is my belief, having been in the office for a mere two and a half years that the Ministry of Tourism needs to be the Ministry of Tourism, Environment, Investment, and Civil Aviation.”
Mike Heusner, BHA
“The problem, the number one goal, problem goal being the same thing in this case is marketing. We have to market our product. Cruise tourism markets their product very very well. They have big budgets which is probably in excess of what the whole country of Belize can market, any cruise company spends on marketing so we don’t need to worry about cruise tourism marketing. We need to worry about marketing the overnight sector, the nature base, the eco-tourism aspect of tourism in Belize.”
Jules Vasquez,
Where are we really with overnight tourism, is it moving from strength to strength or is it wilting just a little?
Mike Heusner,
“I think overnight tourism is expanding slowly, not as fast as some would like to see but it is a continuance uplifting or improvement. The gross income from overnight tourism is definitely more every year. Sometimes at the airport or sometimes on the streets or on the beach you might not see that effect as clearly as the bottom line might be showing.”
A surprisingly small portion of the membership showed up to today’s event. The BHA hopes for a bigger crowd at its annual meeting later this year.
