Jemmott: Plan ahead
Monday August 08 2011 | 05:32 AM

The Crop Over Season has been a good one, and it is expected that August will end on a high note, but one hotelier says that the sector must brace itself for expected falloffs in those numbers during the coming months, as the winter season rolls in.

That is the view of hotelier and former President of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) Alvin Jemmott. 

Jemmott told The Barbados Advocate in an interview that many hotels throughout St. Lawrence Gap and along the South Coast were fully booked in the lead-up to the Crop Over period and Rihanna’s LOUD Concert which took place on Friday night; and with some other events including the upcoming hockey festival and the Lawyers Cricket World Cup set to also take place this month, the figures for August should prove very favourable for the industry. 

He said that cricket tournament starts today and runs until August 21 and is expected to host teams from Australia, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, England and the West Indies, but some persons have booked to stay for as many as 18 nights on the island.

However, with an imminent falloff in mind, Jemmot,t who is General Manager of Divi Southwinds Beach Resort, said that now is a good time to starting planning for the World Travel Market which comes off in the first week of November.

“This will be the first chance we will have to influence travel for the next 18 months and with the Olympics set to come off in the United Kingdom next year, we need to start working now to secure the bookings we will need to sustain the industry,” he said.

Jemmott continued, “We know that the Olympics will be in the UK; we knew this last year around this same time and so we cannot use that as an excuse if our tourism numbers are down next year because we had to time – ample time – to plan for it. That reality, together with the recession, is why it is important that we start to plan now and that both the private and public sectors make the necessary decisions concerning our sales strategy.”