One of Barbados’ major tourist attractions, which shut its doors in March, does not expect to be back in business until December.
The grim news came from Roseanne Myers, general manager of Atlantis Submarines Barbados Ltd, as she participated in an online panel discussion hosted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados (ICAB) on the topic, Beyond Staycations.
Myers, a former president of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA), disclosed that the popular submarine ocean dives company, which has been in operation for 34 years, went on its last tour at the end of March.
According to Myers, it became necessary to shutter operations and cancel bookings as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to explode around the world.
“We took the decision to shut down because we weren’t sure what exactly we would face, and we were not comfortable to expose staff . . . . We cancelled the . . . last cruise ship bookings. We said ‘thank you but no thanks’ and we took the position that it was important to protect the staff rather than go after every cent until the business dried up,” she said frankly.
Myers, who joined fellow panelists Renee Coppin, the general manager of Pirate’s Inn and Infinity on the Beach and Jeffrey Roach, president of the BHTA, said the forced closure of the business has had a direct impact on employees, many of whom have been working there for more than a decade.
With more than 60 per cent of her company’s winter business coming from cruise passengers and the summer business divided between locals and regular air arrivals, Myers said the COVID-19 shock to the company was extremely debilitating.
The tourism executive said among the major challenges confronting the attraction was zero income for at least 20 months, high utility costs, and major severance commitments.
“The next major opportunity was the return of the cruise ships, but we are not getting that back until October 2021 . . . . That chunk of business is hard to replace,” she noted.
Beyond this, Myers said Atlantis Submarines was still stuck with high electricity bills, as it had not invested in alternative energy and “we have staff who have been around for up to 30 years, so we were looking at high severance”.
In this connection, Myers said Government’s $400 million Barbados Employment Sustainability and Transformation (BEST) programme has been of tremendous assistance.
“We had to look at costs. What do I do with my staff? Our social safety net in Barbados has served us well. People needed to go on unemployment and at least you know your staff, to some level, are covered. We were so dependent on the cruise business and when it disappeared, it jolted us. How do I get from March 2020 to November 2021?” she asked.
Myers said the company approached its bankers for a “financial safety net, because the one thing you could do is run out of money”.
Meanwhile, Coppin stressed that while her South Coast hotels had invested heavily in staycation programmes, local business was not enough to sustain the properties where occupancy had plunged to under 20 per cent at one stage.
She said studies have shown that there is pent up demand in the major source markets for travel, but people were also concerned about their safety and the possibility of becoming infected with COVID-19.
The hotelier called for greater strategies on how to encourage more of the island’s repeat visitors who tended to be older, to return to the island and be comfortable knowing that they could do so safely. (IMC1)
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