We're two days out from the re-opening of the Philip Goldson International Airport. And while the projected arrivals between Thursday stand at 714 persons, but how many of those are returning Belizeans and how many actual tourists?
Well, it seems it's 80% Belizean and 20% visitors, that doesn't bode well for the hopes of the long-suffering tourism industry. And this afternoon we asked Belize Hotel Association President Ted Tejada what he projects for the first month of Belize's re-opening.
Ted Tejada, President, Belize Hotel Association
"It actually takes about three weeks that we can start to see the return of the tourists. I believe it also had to do with the changing of the date from August 15th that initially on August 15th we saw a lot more people making their own bookings but because of not opening on that particular date and having them cancel, as you know when you're going on holiday you have to apply for vacations from the company there's a lot of paperwork that needed to be done that did not happen and with that being said October 1st we're believing that some of the guests will be waiting for a couple of weeks maybe three and once they see that we are serious that we are going to open the airport, the international airport then they'll proceed in buying their tickets so we have faith that within the next three weeks we will see a return of our tourists back to Belize."
"We encourage all of them to please complete the Gold Standard certification because that will help them, to guide them, how do they clean the rooms? How do they encounter the guests? How do they take the guests to their rooms? Transportation logistics it helps them to give them an idea. I believe that by November 1st we should see a bigger amount of guests coming in and at this moment there are a lot of hotels that are waiting for that opportunity. A lot of Hotels will no longer make it. I know already of some hotels that are already on sale because they could no longer sustain the pandemic. We just have to try and have faith that we are going to come back to where it was in a couple of months."
Tejada also told us that weekend arrivals at the start of a normal high season weekend would have been between 42,000 to 48,000.
