Barbados to reduce 50% tax on airport service

Barbados declared for reduction of 50% taxes over the airport for inter-regional travellers. This announcement was previously made by the Chairman of CARICOM and PM Gaston Browne to reduce 50% taxes on aeroplane tickets for the same cause for encouraging inter-regional travelling.

 Tourism and International Transport Lisa Cummins said that Cabinet had agreed that there has to be a 50 per cent reduction in airport service charge to regional travellers. That would bring them pretty much in line with what they had been hearing coming out of other markets, and in particular, Antigua, which had meant to reduce the taxes on inter-regional travel. Cabinet had also agreed “to that significant reduction.

Tourism and International Transport Lisa Cummins said that Cabinet later that month would also be discussing on the matter of reduction of taxes on intra-regional travel full price based competitor’s analysis for Barbados.

Tourism and International Transport Lisa Cummins said that the analysis would focus on a comprehensive review of the industry.

 Lisa Cummins said that she had to confess that she always said to people that she came from the public sector. Her specialization has been in international trade, she came from the international community and the private sector, so she tends to try to bring all of those things combined into one, and so what they had started to do has to look at the tourism sector as comprehensively as they could structurally as well as their price competitiveness.

When previously PM Gaston Browne did reduction 50%tax on the aeroplane tickets. PM Browne said that they were thinking at that time where regional travel has been relatively low, extremely flat that there has been very little to lose and even though it might not be the best condition which to analyse the elasticity of ticket prices, it would give them some indicative indication as to how a reduction in pricing would impact on demand without building a financial pressure.