56 February 2016 - Business View Caribbean
And because of the Recession, we were not able to
move up our ADR, our Average Daily Rate, as quickly
as we wanted to as an industry, but we’ve been seeing
it move up four to six points each year over the last two
years. Despite improved performance, one third of the
hotels reported an anticipated loss in 2015. That’s not
insignificant, but at the height of the Recession over
half of them were reporting that. So we’ve seen some
change, that way.
“90 percent of the hotels characterized the 2015 tour-
ism industry as ‘strong to moderate.’ And the outlook
for 2016 remains positive with some concerns. The
outlook wasn’t as strong as 2015, but it’s still strong.
We asked a few questions about those concerns and
received comments that categorized a couple of areas
– high operating costs, taxation pressures, air lift chal-
lenges, and, to a lesser extent, perceptions of crime
and safety in the region.”
You mentioned “air lift challenges.” Are you alluding
to the fact that air travel to the islands is still too
expensive for many people?
We’ve not engaged
some our key peo-
ple, including the
airline stakehold-
ers, as effectively
in recent years. So,
part of the man-
date we’ve given
ourselves is to
reach out to them
much more effec-
tively and we’re do-
ing that, right now.
We’ve done some
research on price
elasticity and at
CHTA New Executive Team (left to right): Emil Lee, President, CHTA; Vanessa Ledesma, COO,
CHTA; Frank Comito, CEO, CHTA; Matt Cooper, CMO, CHTA.
