Barbados has reduced the airport service charge to boost travel to the island from within CARICOM.
Minister of Tourism and International Transport Ian Gooding-Edghill led off debate on the Airport Service Charge (Amendment) Bill 2023 in the House of Assembly yesterday, with the legislation being passed and the tax reduced from US$35 to US$20.
It is intended that the six-month reduction from July 1 to December 14 will stimulate CARICOM travel to Barbados during the summer months when the island traditionally experiences a dearth of visitors, particular from the Caribbean. The cost of inter-regional travel is particularly high.
Gooding-Edghill said: “We felt that this was an opportunity for us to stimulate the Caribbean travel market. We recognise that we have to stimulate the local market . . . We would have had pre-COVID LIAT that would have brought a lot of passengers to Barbados. We no longer have LIAT in this form that we had. It has now effectively been reduced to a very small portion of the passengers coming from within the Caribbean to Barbados. (GC)