The Belize Hotel Association held its annual general meeting today. And while we are used to horse dead and cow fat stories from just about every group in every sector, it's no different for the overnight sector. The association has 137 members and the consensus is that taxes are too high and occupancy is too low - but there's always the future - and the future is marketing. President of the Association Mariam Roberson explained.
Mariam Roberson, Outgoing President - BHA
"Our Belize Hotel Association website that has been redone. think that one of the challenges we face that brought us to that level was low marketing. We felt that the occupancy is low in Belize on a general basis and in trying to help hotels put their hotels in the forefront so we consider that to be a highlight this year of our accomplishments so guests can go on the Belize Hotel Association website and make a final booking online. And that is dealing with one of the challenges which is improve the marketing.
Other challenges that we continue to face, we will need to continue advocating and lobbying for what we need in the hotel industry will continue to be on the forefront of the BHA calendar of events.
Currently we are advocating for obviously lower taxes, for a relook at the general sales tax which the hotel sector is in the exempt classification. We are really lobbying hard and hope that government will relook at that and just to share with you what that does, it puts us in a category that tax we cannot claim, the inputs that we make in hotel improvements and capital investments so it drives the costs of operation high and that is definitely one of the reasons why we are looking at hotels who are falling on the wayside that do not have the budget to do marketing because they cannot remodel they are not making enough money to put back money back into properties so we are seeing some of the traditional hotels struggling.
We are also face with high cost of operation in general. We feel that the infrastructure that goes along with making a tourism industry vibrant is definitely lacking, we talked about roads, we talked about transportation and we know that is a financial challenge for government but we are calling on them if they are going to make tourism a priority then they will have to move at a faster pace and we see areas like the airport development but form the hotel perspective we definitely need some assistance in making hotels start making money."
Presently the BHA is represented by BTIA on the Belize Tourism Board however BHA would like to get its own seat.
