We turn now to a bit of positive news coming out of the Tourism Industry. The local airline, Tropic Air, expanded its regional network today with an inaugural flight to San Pedro Sula in Honduras. It's their fourth international flight into Central America, and they invited the tourism industry and the press to celebrate the milestone with them.
Our 7News was there for the two ceremonies: one in Belize and the other in San Pedro Sula. Daniel Ortiz has that story:
This morning, Tourism Minister Anthony Mahler and his team from the Ministry and the Belize Tourism Board joined Tropic Air's CEO, Steve Shulte, and other Tropic Air employees in celebrating the Belizean airline company's inaugural flight to San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
Steve Shulte - CEO, Tropic Air
"Tropic Air was founded to bring tourists to San Pedro. Together with our partner hotels and the Belize Tourism Board, we've had great success in growing tourism in all of Belize. The airline industry is the door through which tourists arrive. Today, we're opening another door to San Pedro Sula to continue that growth."
Anthony Mahler - Minister of Tourism & Diaspora Relations
"For the last two and a half years, we've been going through COVID, the war in the Ukraine, inflation - last week being hit by [a] hurricane, but I must say that we have been a resilient industry."
"Like Mr. Shulte said, airlift into a country for the overnight sector is the lifeblood. We have put an inordinate amount of effort into building airlift into Belize, going to routes, going to the airlines' headquarters, to meet them, talk to them, pitch Belize, to provide incentives. We promised two years ago that we will do everything possible to build airlift. With the partnership with Tropic Air, we have done so again."
It's the air carrier's 4th international route to the Central American region, and to celebrate its departure from Belize, the tourism execs indulged in a small ceremonial cake and ribbon-cutting.
According to the CEO, Tropic Air will have to be patient and allow this new flight at least two years to mature before it will start to see returns on the investment.
Steve Shulte - CEO, Tropic Air
"The tourism industry is never static, and so we're always looking for new opportunities to increase the tourists coming to Belize. The regional flights help us connect with some of the flights that don't come to Belize on a regular basis. COPA comes once a week, so this will give us a connection to COPA through San Pedro Sula. Our flight to San Salvador also gives us that connection. I think that this is in the very early stages of regional development, and it will take us perhaps two years before we will see any return on this flight. But, we have to start at some time, and I think with the market in Belize full and expanding, we don't want to miss the opportunity to expand it further."
Some 40 minutes after boarding the inaugural flight, the first Tropic Air passengers from Belize to San Pedro Sula arrived at the Aeropuerto International Ramon Villeda Morales.
Those passengers quickly disembarked - most of them more gracefully than me - and in the arrival area, Tropic Air had a small champagne celebration to note that the very first trip on the new route went just as planned.
Steve Shulte - CEO, Tropic Air
"Honduras has always been friendly. It's always been a friend to Tropic Air. We've had many invitations to fly into Honduras from government officials over the years. I remember, many years ago - though I can't recall the name of the minister now. But, he came to a meeting here, and he said, 'Tropic Air, you can fly anytime you want to Honduras [You] don't need paperwork, nothing.' So, they've always been friendly."
Kevin Rodriguez Castillo - Executive Director, Chamber of Commerce & Industry of Cortes, Honduras
"Greetings to the people from Belize. We're really happy. We're really glad that now we can have the option to travel directly to Belize. I, myself, am thinking about visiting Belize for the first time, and hopefully, we're gonna have a lot of people from Belize traveling to Honduras. We're gonna be able to share our cultures. So, Congratulations to Tropic Air."
Anthony Mahler
"As I understand it, we have somewhere around fifty or sixty thousand people here in Belize with Honduran connections. And so, that is an important market for us, the same thing as with El Salvador and other parts of Central America. As I said, we believe that it could be a crucial part in terms of our growth and development for years to come. And so, we're now focusing on Central America and Latin America, and then hopefully, we can get something out of Europe pretty soon."
Tropic Air's CEO told us that at this time, the flight from Belize to San Pedro Sula is scheduled to operate twice a week, and their marketing team will observe its performance to adjust for additional days if the flow of passengers calls for it.
Tourism Minister Anthony Mahler said that stakeholders in the industry are trying to recover from between 6 and 7 million dollars in damages caused by Hurricane Lisa.
