Despite assurances by Minister of Tourism, Noel Lynch that intra Caribbean airfares would not be allowed to escalate in the wake of a LIAT/Caribbean Star merger and the re-branding on BWIA into Caribbean Airlines, fares within in the region are the highest on record.
Take a return flight from Barbados to St. Maarten as an example.
US$390.55 with Caribbean Airlines (the only non stop option), which includes a massive US$132.55 in taxes!
Click on to ‘latest offers’ on the Caribbean Airlines website and you will find the taxes payable for Barbados departures are the second highest of all the destinations offered within the region.
Every indicator shows that Barbados is going to suffer a very soft tourism summer after the mixed ‘fortunes’ of hosting the CWC Cricket.
Matches and intra-Caribbean travel has traditionally been the lifeline for many of our accommodation providers and ancillary services.
Those Barbadians contemplating a long weekend away to a neighbouring island are now faced with inhibitive departure and other taxes, and unless this issue is addressed, it will certainly restrict any meaningful growth in travel throughout the region.
Adrian Loveridge
3 April 2007
These massive airfares are going to kill intra caribbean travel. About a year ago the fare to SVG was only BDS$187. A couple months ago it was rose to BDS$400.
i THINK the airlines, wanted to capitalise on the CWC and make a killing in the same manner that some hotels are doing.
This is rediculously high,,and comes at a time we are taking about CSME…..A JOKE! It will not work with high air fares,
To Trinidad is now over BD$500. Why not put a couple hundred more and go to Miami?
I predict that if the fares do not reduce within the next few months CA and LIAT may have to close.
[...] post by BFP and software by Elliott [...]
No Name during last year you could buy a ticket to St.Vincent for as little as Bds $ 64.00 and now it has more the tripled with regards to travel to St.Martin the fares there run to as much as
Bds $ 940.00 just depends on the timing of the purchase, this is becoming quite expensive for interregional travel when one considers that for
8 hrs of travel to London versus 1 hr from St.Martin you can get to London for an additonal Bds $ 400.00 it makes no logicial sense these regional fares at all.
The sooner Caribbean Airlines(a.k.a. the relic of BeeWee) dies, the better.
Why T&T didn’t just leave the stupid thing as ‘BeeWee’ is beyond me, and most people.
Many in the aviation industry reckon that CA is nothing more than T&T Govt’s way of weaning the Trinidadian public off their nationalistic “need” for an airline,
which is why I say the sooner it just DIES and gets it all over with, the better!
I am not sure why regional airlines cannot offer more competitive fares and be profitable at the same time.
You cannot compare the fare on a shorter route with that on a longer route. The cost of the $60 airport service charge will be much more significant (as a percentage of total cost) on a ticket to St. Vincent than it will be on a ticket to London. Also, the ground handling charges are probably higher per passenger for a smaller aircraft than a larger one.
Did the Best of Barbados programme apply to inter-regional travel? Maybe governments do need to subsidise the cost of inter-regional travel.
The airfare issue is a very serious one and affects not only outbound from Barbados but also inbound. Many will know that the Caribbean is one of the strongest growing inbound markets to Barbados, on a recent visit to a neighbouring island a travel agent friend of mine suggested that the new Liat and Caribbean Airlines were shooting themselves in the foot with the new out of touch airfares, making it more economical to go to Puerto Rico or put a few extra dollars and go to Miami instead of a neighbouring island. The only Airline that had some reasonable fares was Air Jamaica with decent fares from SLU to Barbados.
Airport taxes are another issue and not only do we need to address them other islands as well. St Lucia recently adjusted their departure tax, and their facilities and definitely sub standard.
What effect has airfare had on CWC? A minister in Antigua was recently quoted as saying Antiguans had fully supported CWC with many attending matched but asked where were the other Caribbean Islands? Question 1. Were seats available? 2. At what price?.
It is funny these C’bean government now complain about their loss making airlines but the fact of the matter is– they have designed their airlines organisations to be loss making! from the ground up.
When BWIA was in the air the T&T government loaded it down with many unprofitable or highly subsidized routes. These routes went mainly to the “small islands” where airtraffic was light but demands by those governments to still fly half empty jets were heeded. Along with the gurantee to keep airfares down…. This was true of the Grenada-Trinidad route but as a favour BWEE still flew that route subsidized. At the same time BWIA, LIAT, CaribbeanSun(To a much lesser extent) also while trying to fly the unprofitable routes had to share their profitable routes with airlines from North America, Europe and even South America. These airlines knew if they kept costs on those routes to a minimum, the gov’t airlines wouldn’t be able to hang on long….. The Caribbean government airlines would have needed to charge a slight premium on the profitable routes to directly cross-subsidize the loss making or unprofitable routes to be sustainable airlines however because the Caribbean already tied up. “Open Skies” agreements with the USA they can’t keep those campanies from spilling over and sucking up profits in the region. If they were smart they would have regulated the air routes. Like the US regulates Caribbean airline routes. Caribbean based airlines are banned from flying between any two US airports but US airlines can fly for example between Tobago-Trinidad if they wished….
If Caribbean governments were smart they would pair up two profitable routes along with a single unprofitable route to be flewn by all US airlines as well. Then the Caribbean airlines wouldn’t have been at a disadvantage all the time. If BWIA had only flown profitable routes and dropped the unprofitable ones it would still probably be in the air today.
I also knew Caribbean Airlines was going to tank. BWEE had sooo many grandfathered plans and agreements in place that were in it’s favour it was nothing to sneeze at. Now they gave all that up for a new “name” which they will lose grandfathered plans and end up having to pay a next set of money to promote the new– airline. I should go buy the old BWEE name just to show those jokers up. And this time put in place a customer bill of rights such as the right to an ontime flight etc. etc. and turn around the whole image of the airline. Work the cost of buying new jets into the budget etc….
[...] Caribbean Airlines, intra-island airfares are the highest they have ever been. Barbados Free Press worries that “unless this issue is addressed, it will certainly restrict any meaningful growth… Janine [...]
I recently received a package from a very highly respected official in the Tourism Industry. I was never so shock in my life when I opened the package to realize that it was a collection of information on this idiot that Minister Lynch had to put in his place couple Sundays ago, loveridge.
The note on the package said, “Please use the contents herein to enlightened our people on the level of hypocracy that now conveniently falls from the mouth of the embodiment of racist, loveridge”. The gentlemen worked with our relic of colonialism and has gathered quite an archive on his life in Barbados. The package contained a document for every day of the year and upon every subject matter the he has ever spoken. Barbadians will be most suprise who this loveridge really is and how he truly feels about them.
When I said in a previous post that he is only relevant to the new intellectually weak DLP I did not know how right I was. In fact I will from time to make some of the information available to this blog but I must tell you the truth I have been ignoring this idiot on this blog to the extent that nothing he post on this blog has been engaging my attention.
I have sent some of the information to the Minister and the rest will simply be dealth with appropiately since loveridge the idiot does not pose any challenge to the government and people of Barbados. He is simply not within my peripheral view.
This morning he is obviously either feeling black or singing for his swallow at the DLP’s butcher stall and so he his carrying about high prices in the airline industry. But how did he feel exactly eleven years ago?
Taken from page 10 of Business Morning for April 1, 1996. The headlines read “British hotelier’s recipe for tourism. Make B’dos more expensive”.
“British hotelier, Margaret Shaw believes making Barbados a more expensive holiday destination is a good recipe to revive the island’s tourism product”.
“The European rate was very cheap , now it is not. It is more expensive than the Caribbean. We have a good product here and we should not undersell it and I dont mean just the hotels, I mean the island on the whole”.
Where has Loveridge come in in all this. Ms. Shaw was loveridge’s business partner who together owned a tour operating company in the UK. Loveridge shared her view on a high price Barbados. Infact you should know that they bought a hotel in Barbados and that they also erected boulders to block access from black people getting to the beach, which this Government had to remove.
I know you will respond loveridge and when you do let us know what frame of mind you are in. Would be in the mind of a white man speaking a black language.
Royal Rumble no matter what spin you come with loudmouth Noel Barney Lynch going down. He is drowning in his own sea of lies. George Payne must be cackling. Lynch didnt take the ‘pain’ out of tourism at all . He increased it.
But peaches making a profit; vs gems losing millions!
RR
you are going down a path of self destruction when you comment with your race issues we have long moved on from that point in this society.
Mr Loveridge is running circles around that twit Lynch and making people see Lynch for what he really is and that is a crook of the highest order a liar of great proportions whereas Mr Loveridge has stood up to this idiot and confronted him on every lie that is Lynch, with no regard for truth and honesty Lynch continues to lie and squirm his way thru this fiasco that he Owing and Mottley have created and thrust upon we the taxpayers.
I thought we were talking airfare?
RoyalRumble..
Its truly amazing the level you and your political cohorts will sink in an attempt to disguise the truth.
Was it a white person refusing to allow a black person to sit in the same studio?
NO!
Who publicly stated ‘You are not sufficiently indigenous’ to chair a Government convened committee where I was unanimously elected by the board’
Answer: Minister Lynch’s cousin – sacked Minister George Payne.
Now remind me, wasn’t he sacked for threatening someone? Roy Morris and his family?
And next time you are speaking to Minister Lynch
ask him about the threatening phone call he made to me one February Sunday morning.
And ask who threatened the publisher of the Advocate, that if my column was kept in the newspaper, that Government would withdraw all its advertising.
Keep up the threats, RoyalRumble. It will only further expose the kind of people you are and what you are prepared to do to maintain power.
Government has never removed any boulders from our property simply because no boulders have ever been placed to block beach access to anyone.
And the article you refer to, Ms Shaw (now Mrs Loveridge) has no recall of the eact words you quote, so please by all means post the article and we will respond accordingly.
Mr. Loveridge.
To whom are you pointing blame for the high airfares in the region? My guess is that yet again you are trying to blame our Minister of Tourism for airfares that a TRINIDADIAN airline has implemented? Or is that you are blaming him for our passenger service charge?
Barbados’ charge is NOT the highest in the region. Bermuda’s is higher.
I completely agree with the charge. This is the same folly that surfaced when the US Consulate raised the fee from $90 to $202. Oh yea, we complained and we got over it. The same way we’ve gotten over the new passenger service charge. I support it completely.
Barbados has one of the highest travel proposensities in the eastern Caribbean, (as someone in the industry for 23 years, adrian I’m sure you know what that is), we will continue to travel no matter the charge. Have you heard any airline complain about the charge to the effect that they have lower load numbers? I think not.
Stop flustering old dust Adrian.
Griffith there certainly has been complaints from airlines do you not remember the head of Virgin Atlantic complaining bitterly about the increase in these taxes especially to that intransit passengers are now required to pay this tax now this is immoral indeed,
I can understand why you would see nothing wrong with these massive increases because once you do it it well done and this is disgusting to the core, funny enough it really does not matter if you agree or do not agree it will be changed after the next elect to correct the nonsense as it is now.You will be out of office and will not have any further say on any issues and further to that you will be removed from you and the rest of your ministers
I happen to frequent the area by Peach & Quiet as a youngster fishing on the rocks and diving sea-eggs while pulling wilts and in all my life I have never seen any boulders restricting residents from the beach.I am now 36 and all the boys in the nieghbourhood were doing this from 10 years and up.
So RR please dont stoop to lies just to get a point across.
PS…..RR …..do you even know where Peach & Quiet is??
Colin Symes, who is the new head of VA in the Caribbean never said that load factors were down, as you say, he was talking about intransit passengers and how it affected them. That has nothing to do with what I’m saying.
Intransit passengers are not counted as tourists…..so it doesn’t matter.
No airline has catergorically stated that passenger loads are down because of the tax and that the TRUTH of the matter
It’s in some remote area of Christ Church…..I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
***************
Comment by Marcus
The folks at Inch Marlow would be happy to know that the BLP considers them “remote”. Peach & Quiet is a small well maintained hotel with reasonable prices, great atmosphere (quiet and beautiful) and fabulous meals.
Although Shona and I have never stayed there, we did have one fancy meal there last summer on our anniversary. Mostly though our experience with Peach and Quiet comes from the shore as there is some excellent lobster and crabbing to be done from the surfing beach to the east all along to another 200 yards west of Peach & Quiet. You can see us crabbing down there a few times a year.
Marcus
[...] insider Royalrumble posted today on a Barbados Free Press article written by Mr. Loveridge Sky High Intra Caribbean Airfares! posted by Royalrumble – April 5, 2007, 1:16pm [...]
Intransit passengers are not counted as tourists…..so it doesn’t matter.
Yet still the minister counts them when he brags about the numbers of tourist arrivals.
Seems to me RR and JG are either the same or sitting in the same room.
I know Peach & Quiet and I would and have recommemd it to anyone because of its location and atmoshpere,not to mention service.
You may not like the owner but the place is great.
A real oasis in the desert.
You idiot Griffith where in my writings did I ever say load figures were down just your BLP lies again, what I said that he had complained about the tax on intransits and it was an unreasonable tax.
I don’t mean you, I mean Adrian Loveridge, that’s what his preposterous article implies.
Chase, intransit passengers are NOT counted. Check with the CTO for verification. If intransit passengers were included, Barbados would have 700,000 long stay arrivals yearly.
The only thing preposterous is your claims to not knowing anything about the US $ 15 Mill loan and that we will have 90,000 people in barbados of which you say 75,000 will be on 28 cvruise ship when you know that you are likely to have only 10 ships in harbour and most of which will be small vessels where were you going with these concotions ? you think that we listen and do not think like you do not think?
Comment by Marcus
The folks at Inch Marlow would be happy to know that the BLP considers them “remote”. Peach & Quiet is a small well maintained hotel with reasonable prices, great atmosphere (quiet and beautiful) and fabulous meals.
Although Shona and I have never stayed there, we did have one fancy meal there last summer on our anniversary. Mostly though our experience with Peach and Quiet comes from the shore as there is some excellent lobster and crabbing to be done from the surfing beach to the east all along to another 200 yards west of Peach & Quiet. You can see us crabbing down there a few times a year.
Marcus
Why do we continue to let idiots like RR and Javon highjack this blog? Let us stay focused.
Back to air travel within the region. I heard in the news this morning that St.Lucia is cincerned about the lack of response to Jazz and they blame it on the airfares. I wonder what will happen to the Tobago Jazz festival~
The airlines need to consider reducing the airfares significantly. That is the only way we are going to have any material increase in the traffic between the islands. It only cost about BDS$100 to travel between Trinidad and Tobago…a flight that takes about 25 mins. This fare is subsidised by the gov… but the flights are always full and Trinidadians sometimes sleep overnight at the airport in order to ensure thatn they get on the first available flight to Tobago.
I am convinced that If fares are reduced we will see a signifcant increase in travel!
The bachannal right now in Tobago is over Elton John and his homosexuality…. Some clergy say he should be banned, others say don’t ban the man— or you could create an International press scandal.
Too late—- “Tobago Christian leaders want Elton John banned” (New Zealand)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/manawatustandard/4007460a1860.html
Under an article by Nation News writer, Julia Rawlins-Bentham headlined ‘Air Vow’ and published 5th February 2007 Minister Lynch is quoted as stating
‘Government intends to do all it can to keep airfares affordable for Caribbean people travelling throughout the region’
That assurance came from Minister of Tourism, Noel Lynch who ‘warned that if airlines only flew to destinations that were considered economical, the movement of travellers in the region could be significantly retarded’.
He went on to say ‘The message is that for the first time in the region, we’re going to be seeking to get as close to an enconmic rate as we can, and we’re going to rationalise a low expense so that we can keep the rates manageable and affordable for Caribbean people to travel intra-regionally’.
Uh!
Yet here we are experiencing the highest intra-regional airfares in history.
There can be no doubt that the Minister exudes copious amounts of hot air.
Whether the rhetoric is based on truth or not!
Clearly, he is distancing himself from any responsibility for the CWC, but surely he cannot from such a vital lifeline as regional air transportation, especially as he has been so intimately involved in the negioations with Caribbean Star and LIAT.
I wonder what the excuse will be this time?
How many times has Lynch been caught lying, cooking statistics or boasting about some irrelevancy or trivia. Lynch twists his position to suit whatever develops. Today he saying World Cup held at wrong time and blaming ICC for host of other things. Where was his voice during planning stages? Lynch was preparing to pompaset when the WC reached its glorious conclusion. Now that WC is worst on record Lynch lying and blaming others as is his wont. He says Bajans were in euphoria about WC. Does Lynch live in Barbados? I nor anyone I know experienced any
euphoria.
This is indeed the truth. I travelled from St.Kitts to barbados on January 17th to 19th for the U.S embassy. It cost me on Liat E.C $1300.00 to that round trip ticket.
Due to outrageous cost like these, we are forced to dish out those type of money because of crucial appointments like these.
Liat, trust me, Competition and New Strategic efficient regional airline will surface, its just a matter of time, and hopefully your stupidity and theft will stop…
I sincerely Wished that this mail would be published…
What Barbados and the Caribbean needs is some real competition within the airline industry, I remember once upon a time in the UK when there was very little competition in the UK and British Airways was the supreme daddy. They would charge what they wanted on certain routes because there was no competition and then along came Easyjet, Ryanair and Virgin who provided some real competition on may of BA’s routes and wolla the prices started to come tumbling down real fast.
The government in the UK also charges ridiculous taxes on airfares, which are even more hefty than what you guys are charged in Barbados.