The British airline, Virgin Atlantic, says it wants to provide affordable travel for Caribbean passengers going to Europe and also intends to collaborate with Barbados in packaging what is called a bolder vision for the island that would lure more visitors to the region.
“I’d like to see a grander vision for this island, being a bit more confident of what it wants to achieve. We know there is always demand for more hotel rooms of high quality. We want to see a development of the shoreline,” said Virgin Atlantic’s chief executive officer, Shai Weiss.
“We want to see a bold vision for entrepreneurship…all the things that I know your government is working on. We’d like to see it all packaged towards a vision for 2030, that we can be a big part of…and I know it will excite many customers, passengers, leisure-makers to come to this wonderful place,” Weise, who was in Barbados as part of a visit to the region, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).
He also sought to assure Caribbean travellers that the airline, whose majority owner is the British business magnate, Sir Richard Branson, would do everything in its power to make travel aboard the carrier between the region and Europe as affordable as possible.
“When we look at cost, every airline has what we call controllable cost, stuff that we can actually impact, and the non-controllable. Over the last few years, the non-controllable, given the tensions around the world, the pressures of the pandemic and the post-pandemic era, we have seen a big rise in the cost of fuel.
“We have seen, of course, a big rise in inflation, and interest rates. So, that has impacted us dramatically. And our job is then [to] try to be as efficient as we can on the stuff that we do control, so that we can pass on the best prices to our customers,” Weiss told CMC.
Weiss also expressed delight that the airline, whose minority owner is Delta Air Lines, a major American airline group, has returned to its 2019 passenger levels this year.
“For us, what I would like to see is actually, more of the people on our planes using the packages to tourists [where] you are combing a car and a hotel with a flight. We have a Virgin Atlantic Holiday. So, I’d like to see that continue to rise, and more people on our planes coming with a full suite of Virgin Atlantic services.
“About 10 per cent of our international capacity is dedicated to the Caribbean. I would say that we are very pleased that Delta Air Lines is starting to fly to the Caribbean, as of October from Atlanta and New York, and I think that would feed into the tag markets…these other markets that we serve out of Barbados.
Weiss said, “Overall between us and our partners, I think we are really satisfied with the capacity. Now it’s how we get it to blossom further”.
Describing the Caribbean as a home away from home for Virgin Atlantic, Weiss said the carrier brings half a million visitors to the region annually, with 200,000 coming to Barbados.
He said he is happy with the benefits that have been derived from the more than two decades of a mutual relationship with the Caribbean.
Weiss told CMC that Virgin Atlantic, which will be celebrating its 40th anniversary on June 22 this year, builds a calendar of events annually to ensure that it can provide the maximum capacity on its aircraft for visitors on both sides to attend each other’s festivals.
He said that the Caribbean would not be left out of the global anniversary party.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Mar 11, CMC –
CMC/ej/ir/2024