Optimism for UK, Caribbean travel

CARIBBEAN Hotel and Tourism Association first vice-president Nicola Madden-Greig was optimistic that the region was making progress towards reopening travel with different countries, such as the United Kingdom.

She said this during a webinar hosted by the Caribbean Council and the Colibri Corporate Advisory on UK-Caribbean travel during the pandemic.

Madden-Greig said the regional tourism sector was hard hit last year by the pandemic, with a loss of US$36 billion in gross domestic product and thousands of workers lost their jobs as well. She was concerned about further losses, if regional tourism was not restarted in a substantial way soon.

She explained that through a series of health, safety and public relations strategies, industry stakeholders have been seeking to find innovative ways to keep its customers safe while adhering to covid19 protocols.

"We took it seriously from day one.”

Madden-Greig said stakeholders have also been using this time in the pandemic to develop new offerings for customers.

Referring to Caribbean Public Health Agency (Carpha) executive director Dr Joy St John's comments about how Caricom has been able to handle the pandemic better than many other countries, Madden-Greig was hopeful that strategies could be developed to allow tourists to travel safely between the UK and the Caribbean.

Virgin Atlantic chief commercial officer Juha Jarvinen shared her optimism. He said the airline has been flying to the Caribbean since 1997 and with its founder Sir Richard Branson having a home in the region, Virgin Atlantic considers the Caribbean home.

Jarvinen said the airline's revenues took an 80 per cent decline with the reduction in commercial flights because of covid19. But he said Virgin Atlantic's cargo business threw the airline an important lifeline which has allowed it to keep flying.

He said the resumption of the airline's service to St Vincent and the Grenadines has been rescheduled from July to October because of the recent eruption of the La Soufriere volcano.

He added, Virgin Atlantic is also looking at other Caribbean destinations with a view to resuming flights in the near future.

Consultant Carol Hay said there is still a lot of doubt on the UK side, with British nationals uncertain about whether it is safe to travel to the Caribbean. She said recent comments in the public domain, including mixed messaging from government ministers, have contributed to this doubt.

"I couldn't listen to the news for a while."

Hay attributed the confusion in the UK to the British government's traffic light system, to determine which countries are safe to travel to and which are not.

The system includes red, amber and green lists, with travel only being allowed to countries on the green list. Trinidad and Tobago, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia, Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and the Bahamas are on that list. No Caribbean country is on the green list.

Hay said given efforts by Caribbean countries to deal with the pandemic, a case could be made to move them to the green list.