For over 30 years, in­ter-re­gion­al trav­el is­sues have been dis­cussed at var­i­ous high-lev­el meet­ings, but noth­ing tan­gi­ble has been put in place to pro­pel tourism among Caribbean des­ti­na­tions.

That’s the view of Be­lize Tourism Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Mahler, as he said to get from his coun­try to Trinidad two week­ends, he had to fly to Mi­a­mi first.

“I al­so had to stay overnight in Mi­a­mi. That is a prob­lem for peo­ple trav­el­ing and that’s why Be­lize doesn’t get as many Eu­ro­pean­vis­i­tors, as we be­lieve they will al­so have to overnight in oth­er coun­tries such as Mex­i­co and the Unit­ed States. And so, I be­lieve we need bet­ter con­nec­tiv­i­ty through­out the Caribbean, for us to be able to grow tourism,” he stat­ed.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Busi­ness at the Hilton Trinidad re­cent­ly, Mahler said Be­lize is the gate­way be­tween the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and that is why work­ing to im­prove con­nec­tiv­i­ty is of para­mount im­por­tance.

He said his min­istry is cur­rent­ly in talks with sev­er­al car­ri­ers, in­clud­ing Caribbean Air­lines and Cay­man Air­ways to in­crease flights to the coun­try.

“You have to work hard and knock on the doors if you want to in­crease con­nec­tiv­i­ty. So, my team and I vis­it­ed many air­lines in their of­fices. We’ve been to Routes of Amer­i­ca’s de­vel­op­ment meet­ings. Get­ting new car­ri­ers to en­ter a new route is not an easy task as it can take up to five to six years for a deal to be signed off. We have a do­mes­tic car­ri­er who car­ries up to 13 peo­ple on each place to the dif­fer­ent off­shore is­lands in Be­lize and the young own­er of the air­line is think­ing of buy­ing big­ger planes to be­come a re­gion­al air­line car­ri­er,” the min­is­ter high­light­ed.

To be able to sus­tain the ar­rivals, he said a Lon­don firm has been award­ed the con­tract to up­grade Be­lize’s main in­ter­na­tion­al air­port over a ten-year pe­ri­od which will cost US$125 mil­lion.

Tourism

Mahler said Be­lize’s tourism in­dus­try is re­bound­ing and he be­lieves by 2024 it should be back to 100 per cent.

“Tourism rep­re­sents al­most 46 per cent of Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP). This is our biggest for­eign ex­change earn­er, and the coun­try has be­come very de­pen­dent on it. For me, I would pre­fer a lit­tle bit more di­ver­si­ty in the econ­o­my, for us to be able to han­dle any ex­oge­nous shocks that have hap­pened around the world, es­pe­cial­ly hur­ri­canes, which we al­ways pay close at­ten­tion to each sea­son,” he out­lined.

The min­is­ter al­so said the aim is to keep mar­ket­ing the des­ti­na­tion as many re­gion­al peo­ple are not aware that Be­lize is part of the Caribbean and what it has to of­fer.

“We have pris­tine beach­es, lush jun­gles, and a rich cul­tur­al her­itage, for every­one to en­joy and we are al­so known as an eco-ad­ven­ture des­ti­na­tion.”  

The Be­lize Tourism Board (BTB) web­site states that Amer­i­cans ac­count­ed for 72.5 per­cent of Be­lize’s overnight vis­i­tors in May.

 BTB re­ports that 150,206 US trav­el­ers vis­it­ed the coun­try dur­ing the month. Be­lize is al­so one of a hand­ful of Caribbean des­ti­na­tions that at­tracts both land-based and cruise-ship vis­i­tors.

As it per­tains to ho­tels, Mahler said Be­lize has 900 ho­tels with 9,000 rooms, but the av­er­age size of a ho­tel is 10 rooms.  

“That has its charm, but as you move for­ward and you want to be com­pet­i­tive from a glob­al stand­point, you need to have a larg­er room stock and a bet­ter room stock.

“And so that has been our ap­proach, to talk to in­vestors and de­vel­op­ers and brands to en­sure we have ad­e­quate rooms. In­ter­na­tion­al ho­tel Four Sea­sons is be­ing built,”Mahler said.

As it re­lates to the cruise ship in­dus­try Be­lize host­ed 1.7 mil­lion pas­sen­gers in 2019, ac­cord­ing to Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion da­ta.

Asked how this seg­ment has per­formed so far in 2023, Mahler said: “If you look at the sizes of the ships be­ing built now, the [largest] ships get the bulk of the vis­i­ta­tion. We don’t have a dock­ing fa­cil­i­ty, so larg­er ships by­pass Be­lize and go to Roatan and Can­cun. As soon as we get our dock­ing fa­cil­i­ty here, we’ll see the num­bers start go­ing up once again.”

Fur­ther, he said the tourism sec­tor took a hit dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the gov­ern­ment fo­cused a lot more on agri­cul­ture and oil pro­duc­tion.

Mahler, who be­came Tourism Min­is­ter in 2020 said the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try helped the econ­o­my, along with the re­al es­tate in­dus­try which start­ed boom­ing, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“Cur­rent­ly, the Be­lize re­al es­tate mar­ket is con­sid­ered a buy­er’s mar­ket, with prop­er­ty prices low­er than those in many oth­er Caribbean des­ti­na­tions. This presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­vestors to ac­quire prop­er­ties at com­pet­i­tive prices and cap­i­talise on the coun­try’s grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty.  

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there are no re­stric­tions on for­eign own­er­ship of prop­er­ty in Be­lize, mak­ing it easy for in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors to pur­chase and own re­al es­tate. The pur­chas­ing process is al­so rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward, with trans­ac­tions con­duct­ed in Eng­lish and based on British com­mon law,” he re­marked.

An­oth­er sec­tor that has been grow­ing in the coun­try is the Busi­ness Process Out­sourc­ing (BPO) which is now em­ploy­ing over 8,000 per­sons , and gen­er­ates tens of mil­lions in for­eign ex­change.

Trade re­la­tions

Asked about the trade re­la­tions be­tween TT and Be­lize, Mahler said Be­lize main­ly ex­ports cit­rus, sug­ar and soy­beans to T&T at a cost of US$1 mil­lion in 2022.

“So Trinidad for us is an im­por­tant part­ner. We be­lieve that we can deep­en their re­la­tions with the coun­try, but again, trans­porta­tion costs and all these things have to be fac­tored in. How­ev­er, we do have to be­come more ef­fi­cient in pro­duc­ing our­selves,” he iden­ti­fied.

The min­is­ter al­so di­vulged that he came to this coun­try to look at the mari­nas in Ch­aguara­mas as his gov­ern­ment be­lieves yacht­ing can be a big part of the tourism prod­uct