January 2017 | Business View Caribbean

58 59 event; it was quite exciting to see that kind of engagement.” The Great Recession harmed tourism pretty much everywhere, but particu- larly in the Caribbean.What does the landscape look like for the industry over the next several years, and how do you see the Association continuing to be a viable voice for the sector? “We just completed our first annual ‘Industry Performance and Outlook Study.’ The findings really showed that we’re continuing on an upward path that started about three years ago for the region as an aggregate. Some destinations did okay during the Recession, some struggled quite a bit, and some came out of it earlier than others. Collectively, the region really came out of it about three years ago, and we’ve seen a good upward trend line. More than half the hotels report- ed strong to moderate performance in 2015.With increased occupancies and arrivals, most hotels also increased their employment rolls. So there was some robust hiring, last year. “Also, one of the things that hap- pened during the Recession is we saw a retrenchment in capital expen- ditures.We’re starting to see people coming out of that, and last year, they came out of it quite significantly. So, capital expenditures and investments caribbean hotel and tourismassociation in hotel properties were up, last year, and are projected to increase in 2016. The profit pic- ture is a little unsettling, yet, in part because of people still struggling. There are a lot of back payments and things that were put on hold. 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 im- proved 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 tourism 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 challenges, and, to a lesser extent, perceptions of crime and safety in the region.” BVM: You mentioned “air lift challenges.”Are you alluding to the fact that air travel to the island is still too expensive for many people? COMITO: We’ve not engaged some of our key people, including the airline stakeholders, as ef- fectively in recent years. So, part of the mandate we’ve given ourselves is to reach out to them much more effectively and we’re doing that, right now.We’ve done some research on price elasticity and at one point we lose market share because of the high cost of airfare. So, one of our goals around advocacy is to reduce