标签： Barbados

The Caribbean tri-island nation of Grenada is embarking on a strategic repositioning of its tourism sector, shifting away from overreliance on its classic sun-and-coast appeal to draw more regional travelers with a broad, curated lineup of cultural, adventure, culinary, wellness and event offerings. Tourism officials laid out this new growth strategy this week during a media and travel industry dinner held at Divi Southwinds Hotel, where leaders highlighted the one-of-a-kind experiences that set the three-island destination apart from other Caribbean getaways.

Samantha Thomas, Marketing Executive at the Grenada Tourism Authority, told attendees that the country’s deep roots in history and culture form the foundation of its unique appeal, alongside its well-earned title as the “wreck dive capital of the Caribbean.” Comprising the main island of Grenada, plus the smaller neighboring islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique, the destination delivers what Thomas calls “a vacation within a vacation” — a layered experience that caters to every type of traveler, from thrill-seeking divers to slow-paced wellness seekers.

Thomas put particular emphasis on Grenada’s fast-growing reputation as a top culinary tourism destination, noting the country is home to seven operational chocolate factories that offer immersive, farm-to-bar experiences for visitors, alongside a wide range of food-focused activities that highlight its native spices and local culinary traditions. She also showcased the country’s robust eco-tourism portfolio, which includes scenic rainforest nature trails, holistic wellness retreats, and one-of-a-kind marine attractions. Most notable among these is the world’s first ever underwater sculpture park, a bucket-list attraction that many travelers previously associated with far-flung destinations like Bali.

“You don’t have to fly 19 hours to Bali to check that iconic experience off your list,” Thomas explained. “Our underwater sculpture park is just a short trip for regional travelers — literally half an hour by boat from the main island, and a much shorter flight from most Caribbean neighboring countries. It’s exactly the kind of unique, must-see experience that draws visitors from across the region.”

Beyond signature attractions, Thomas also outlined the destination’s rapidly expanding events calendar, which now extends far beyond Grenada’s world-famous annual Spice Mas carnival. This year marked the first ever staging of Carriacou’s Lobster and Lambi Festival, and the country already hosts a popular annual Dive and Conservation Festival that combines recreational diving with marine conservation outreach. Later in 2024, the country will launch its inaugural Grenada Flower Festival, a new event inspired by the nation’s unprecedented success at the UK’s iconic Chelsea Flower Show, where Grenadian horticulturalists have claimed 19 gold medals over the years.

“We’ve decided to turn that award-winning floral legacy into a full public festival that visitors can enjoy,” Thomas said, adding that the new event will be especially appealing to travelers interested in floral design, destination weddings, and group getaways like girls’ trips. She also highlighted the Grenada Diaspora Homecoming event, an initiative modeled after Barbados’ successful We Gatherin’ program that aims to reconnect Grenadians living overseas with their home country and encourage them to visit with friends and family.

Charmaine Gibbs, a representative of local tourism group Insights Grenada, urged visitors to the main island to make time to travel to Carriacou, the smaller “sister island” that remains largely untouched by mass tourism and offers a quiet, authentic Caribbean experience. “No visit to Grenada is truly complete without experiencing the natural beauty and warm hospitality of Carriacou,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs also emphasized that regional cooperation in tourism has grown more critical than ever in the post-pandemic travel landscape, arguing that Caribbean residents should take advantage of the world-class, unique experiences available right on their own doorsteps, rather than traveling long distances for bucket-list trips. “Now is the time to open our doors to each other across the region,” Gibbs said. “We can give fellow Caribbean islanders the chance to experience those once-in-a-lifetime trips that people often spend a whole lifetime saving to do — and we have all of it right here, within a short flight or boat ride from home.”

On Thursday, a cross-sector coalition of Caribbean regional leaders and major global investors issued a clear call to action: Caribbean governments must break long-standing patterns of aid dependence and aggressively pivot toward mobilizing private sector capital to drive inclusive, sustained growth. Opening the high-stakes inaugural Caribbean Economic Forum (CEF) — a gathering that unites global investment firms, national government officials, and leading multilateral financial bodies — organizers laid out an ambitious core goal: to reframe the Caribbean from a patchwork of fragmented small markets into a cohesive, globally competitive, and investable asset class.

Clinton White, founder of Counselor Global Solutions and co-convenor of the CEF, delivered the opening welcome remarks, drawing on his decades of experience working and living in the region during his tenure covering Caribbean economies for the now-disbanded U.S. Agency for International Development. White pointed to Barbados’ decades-long track record of economic resilience as a powerful case study for what small Caribbean states can accomplish when they embrace strategic economic transformation. “After gaining independence in 1966, this 166-square-mile island completely rewrote its economic story: it moved from a system almost entirely reliant on sugar exports to a diversified economy powered by tourism, international financial services, education, and a fast-growing innovation and sustainability sector,” White explained. “That transformation proves small states can deliver extraordinary outcomes when they set clear, ambitious goals.”

White traced the origins of the forum back to a 2020 partnership he forged with CEF Executive Director Kiran Maharaj, USAID, and the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce. The founding principle of that collaboration, he noted, is that no government can deliver large-scale economic transformation on its own. “We all acknowledge that development assistance still plays a critical role in the region, but we also recognize that aid alone will never be enough to tackle the full scale of the Caribbean’s opportunities and challenges,” White said in his address. “Aid can kickstart change, but only private investment can sustain it. Grants can build institutional capacity, but private capital builds entire industries, generates long-term jobs, and rewrites economic trajectories for entire communities.”

White’s opening arguments drew heavily on data from the newly published *Caribbean Development Dynamics 2026* report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which frames the Caribbean as standing at a defining crossroads for development. The report confirms that nearly 80% of all current investment flowing into the Caribbean already comes from the private sector. With that in mind, White argued, the region’s top challenge is no longer convincing global investors of the Caribbean’s inherent value — it is removing structural barriers to channel existing investor interest into high-impact, transformative sectors that deliver broad-based growth. Key priority sectors he identified include renewable energy, climate-resilient sustainable tourism, the blue economy, digital transformation, and artificial intelligence innovation.

“At the end of the day, this forum is not about us — it’s about the next generation of Caribbean people,” White emphasized. “Our goal is to build economies where young people don’t feel forced to leave their home islands to find opportunity. The choices we make in this room will determine whether the next generation inherits a region defined by vulnerability, or one defined by resilience, innovation, and shared prosperity for all.”

Following White’s remarks, CEF co-founder Gregory Hill, who also serves as Managing Partner at ACERO Capital, took the stage to challenge attendees to set aside generic conference rhetoric and focus exclusively on tangible financial execution. Hill pushed back against the long-held international narrative that frames the Caribbean as a collection of isolated, economically vulnerable small states, instead positioning the region as one of the world’s most strategically important untapped investment frontiers.

“Let me be completely blunt and clear from the start: this is not just another regional development conference,” Hill told assembled delegates. “We are not here to talk — we are here to work, we are here to collaborate, and we are here to deliver actual results. We did not gather just to discuss what development could look like; we are here to finance it. So bring your checkbooks.”

Hill argued that the Caribbean economy can no longer afford endless cycles of diagnostic reports and policy discussions that never translate to on-the-ground action. He noted that the combined balance sheets of the global institutional investors and financial bodies represented at the forum total roughly $25 trillion — creating an unprecedented opportunity to close the long-standing gap between abundant global capital and the pipeline of viable, high-impact local projects across the Caribbean.

Over the course of the forum, discussions will center on four core strategic pillars: accelerating the region’s energy transition, building climate-resilient infrastructure, advancing food security through agricultural modernization, and growing the Caribbean’s creative economy. To deliver scaled investment across these sectors, Hill argued, the region needs a modernized financial framework that leverages blended finance structures to reduce risk for private sector entities entering the market.

Hill also called for a fundamental shift in how the success of multilateral development banks and development finance institutions operating in the Caribbean is measured. He proposed that these entities should be evaluated primarily by their ability to mobilize and deploy private capital into productive regional assets, rather than by the total volume of independent loans or grants they disburse.

“Success will not be measured by how eloquent our speeches are today,” Hill said. “Success will only be measured by the formal mandates we sign, the partnerships we lock in, the projects that get actual funding, the businesses that expand, and the jobs that are created for Caribbean people. If we get this right, future generations will look back and see that this was the moment the Caribbean stopped viewing itself as a collection of independent, isolated, fractured economies — and started acting as a unified, investable asset class that delivers shared prosperity for all.”

Barbados’ tourism industry is currently hitting historic highs, but deep-seated disengagement among private sector stakeholders puts its long-term prosperity at severe risk, according to newly elected Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) Chair Kelly-Ann Payne. In her first address after winning the leadership post at the association’s annual general meeting, the veteran hospitality executive did not hold back in sounding the alarm over a growing culture of apathy that is eroding the industry’s institutional foundation.

Barbados’ tourism sector closed out 2025 with robust, broad-based growth, fueled by swelling international visitor demand, climbing hospitality pricing, and targeted industry investment that reinforced the sector’s position as the island nation’s primary economic engine, according to the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA).

In his annual general meeting address, BHTA CEO Senator Ryan Forde highlighted the industry’s remarkable resilience in the face of ongoing global economic volatility, noting that tourism has anchored 19 consecutive quarters of national economic expansion. A deep dive into 2025 performance metrics reveals consistent gains across all key industry indicators: hotel occupancy climbed from 63.8% in 2024 to 65.2% last year, while the average daily room rate (ADR) jumped 13.7% from $631.81 to $718.19. This combination of higher occupancy and stronger pricing pushed revenue per available room (RevPAR) – a critical benchmark for hospitality performance – up nearly 16% year-over-year, from $40.79 to $487.17.

Targeted efforts to boost visitation during the traditional low summer shoulder season also delivered tangible results. Average occupancy between May and October hit 55.2%, a 2.9% improvement over 2024, with only September recording occupancy below the 50% threshold. “Tourism is built on the full visitor experience, not any single offering,” Forde said. “We will continue to lead the nation’s growth as we balance an unprecedented wave of new developments, property refurbishments, and experience upgrades, all while navigating ongoing global geopolitical tensions.”

Beyond core performance gains, the BHTA rolled out several transformative industry initiatives in 2025. The flagship project is the new Bajan Harvest Hub, developed with funding from a competitive regional grant awarded through Compete Caribbean. Led by BHTA’s Greg Alleyne, the hub operates as a coordinated, climate-resilient, demand-driven supply network that connects local farmers and packing facilities directly to hospitality buyers via structured planning and digital tools, fundamentally strengthening linkages between the agriculture and tourism sectors.

The association also completed a full rebranding and expansion of the BHTA Tourism Fund, a program first launched in the early 2000s. Under the leadership of project lead Sade Deane, the overhaul expanded the fund’s eligibility to cover all BHTA membership categories, resolving longstanding issues around brand alignment and low participation. In community outreach, the association launched the Adopt-A-School Futsal Tournament, spearheaded by Tessalee Moore and Rianna Taylor. The event brought industry stakeholders together in the slow period following the annual Crop Over festival, raising more than $30,000 to fund critical school supplies and infrastructure including water tanks, projectors, fans, and football nets.

Membership growth also reflected the BHTA’s expanding influence, with 39 new organizations joining the association in 2025. Forde projected further membership expansion in 2026, driven by the upcoming opening of three major new hospitality properties: Hotel Indigo, Royalton Vessence Barbados, and the Blue Monkey Hotel and Beach Club. He credited the association’s aggressive advocacy work for both strong retention and new recruitment, noting that efforts have already secured partial policy wins in the national government budget. The budget reallocated oversight of the car rental industry to the Ministry of Tourism and International Transport, enabling the sector to access specialized support, while standalone restaurants secured enhanced concessional assistance to improve their global competitiveness. “I say partial because we are still working through the operational details of these changes with the Ministry of Finance,” Forde explained. “We are hopeful that the minister and his team can finalize the guidelines and launch implementation early this quarter.”

Over the past year, the BHTA also prioritized aggressive international destination marketing, sending delegations to nine major global trade shows across the United Kingdom, the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. A high-level delegation including Forde, representatives from Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI), and private sector operators attended the TEAMS Sports Tourism Conference in Ohio, where the team secured promising leads for destination-based sporting events across volleyball, wrestling, futsal, and cheerleading. Forde confirmed that Barbados has already won the bid to host the 2027 World Bridge tournament in September 2025, an event expected to draw between 2,500 and 4,000 international attendees.

At the World Travel Market in London, U.K. travel operators reaffirmed Barbados’ position as a top destination in its market segment, praising the hundreds of millions of dollars in ongoing investment in property renovations and new hotel developments. In a major regional win, a joint bid by the BHTA, BTMI, and Barbados’ Ministry of Tourism secured hosting rights for the 2026 Caribbean Hospitality Industry Exchange Forum (CHIEF), CSHAE, and Taste of the Caribbean in November 2026, as well as Marketplace 45 in May 2027.

The BHTA also saw explosive growth in its digital and public outreach in 2025: total social media impressions hit 3,749,067, a 210.1% year-over-year increase, while total follower count across Facebook, Instagram, and the newly launched professional LinkedIn page grew 30% to more than 14,000.

Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, Forde acknowledged that headwinds including rising oil prices, airline industry volatility, and geopolitical tensions have introduced some uncertainty for both consumer and business spending. But he emphasized that the sector’s collective approach positions it to continue growing. “External pressures build year after year, but the resilience of the Barbados economy is rooted in the strength of our people,” Forde said. “An individualistic ‘I’ or ‘me’ mindset cannot survive tough times in a dynamic industry like tourism. Instead, we rely on a collective ‘we’ and ‘us’ mindset, as we face challenges and seize opportunities together… The Decade of Change continues.”

Barbados’ tourism sector has cemented its robust post-pandemic rebound, with record-breaking visitor numbers and soaring hotel revenue outperforming many competing Caribbean destinations. However, this positive momentum is tempered by growing industry tensions, as outgoing and incoming leadership of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) warn of exploitative practices from major global online travel platforms that threaten the long-term profitability of local accommodation providers.

Newly released industry data confirms that 2025 closed with 727,310 long-stay visitors and 817,950 cruise passenger arrivals, marking a steady climb back to pre-pandemic visitation levels. This upward trend has carried into the first quarter of 2026, with the island already logging 214,944 stayover guests and 473,960 cruise visitors through March. Global hotel industry analytics firm STR reports that while occupancy rates saw a small year-over-year dip between January and March 2026, average daily room rates (ADR) jumped 16.4%, pushing revenue per available room (RevPAR) up 12.5% overall. The strong results prove the island’s ability to command premium pricing in a crowded luxury travel market.

The performance announcement coincided with the final address of outgoing BHTA chairman Javon Griffith, who will step down from the role on July 1 after 22 years working in Barbados’ hospitality industry. In his closing remarks, Griffith emphasized that tourism is far more than an economic driver for the island nation: it is a core reflection of Barbadian identity, he argued, showcasing local warmth, creativity, and resilience to global visitors. He credited the strong visitor numbers and revenue gains to the collective work of every BHTA member, noting that Barbados has positioned itself to compete on quality rather than cutthroat pricing – a strategy that is clearly paying off.

Supporting this growth trajectory is an expanded airlift schedule for the upcoming 2026/27 winter travel season, which runs from October 2026 through April 2027. Across 20 partner airlines, Barbados will offer more than 1.1 million total seats across 8,264 incoming flights. The United Kingdom remains the largest long-haul source market, accounting for 32.3% of total capacity (358,732 seats) led by major carriers British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. The U.S. will contribute 192,402 seats, while Canada adds 110,316 seats, boosted by a new Air Canada route out of Halifax. Regionally, the Caribbean holds the largest overall share of seat capacity at 34.6% (383,608 seats), with interCaribbean Airways and Caribbean Airlines strengthening intra-regional connectivity. Emerging source markets are also gaining traction: Germany’s Condor has allocated 31,000 seats for the season, and Copa Airlines has expanded its Panama-Barbados corridor by 31.2% to tap into growing Latin American visitor demand.

This expanded air access has paired with a wave of private sector reinvestment and new hotel development across the island. The Royalton Vessence Barbados, constructed on the site of the old Discovery Bay Hotel, opened a full month ahead of schedule and has already emerged as a major success story for the sector. Multiple other properties are advancing renovation and reopening plans: Turtle Beach Resort welcomed guests starting June 1, Tamarind Resort is scheduled to resume operations on August 1, and large-scale transformation projects are ongoing at Pendry Barbados, Hyatt Ziva Barbados, and Beaches Barbados. The entire Marriott Barbados Collection is on track to fully reopen by the end of summer 2026, adding 605 fully renovated rooms and suites to the island’s accommodation stock.

Despite the overwhelmingly positive outlook, BHTA leadership is sounding the alarm over growing challenges from online travel distribution, specifically targeting global booking giant Booking.com. The association accuses the platform of leveraging its dominant market position to impose unsustainable commission rates and lopsided commercial terms on local hotels, with penalties including reduced visibility and lower search ranking for properties that refuse to comply. To push back against these practices, the BHTA has rolled out a four-part strategic response: it is urging all member properties to carefully audit any new contractual terms from the platform, accelerating investment in direct booking technology to reduce reliance on third-party intermediaries, building a unified regional coalition with other Caribbean tourism destinations including Grenada, and engaging the Barbadian government to review whether the platform’s practices violate local fair competition regulations.

Griffith stressed that the BHTA’s stance is non-negotiable: “We will not stand by while the commercial foundations of this industry are quietly eroded by any single platform, however large, however globally indispensable it may appear. Commission structures must not become the mechanism by which a global technology company quietly extracts the profitability from the very businesses it purports to support.”

In addition to the platform dispute, the BHTA is calling on Barbados’ Ministry of Finance and Barbados Revenue Authority to release immediate clear guidance on duty-free concession processes for local car rental operators, which are expecting new replacement vehicle fleets to arrive later this month.

As Griffith prepares to hand over the leadership role – a position he held as the youngest chairman in BHTA history – he reflected on his decades in the industry, calling his tenure as BHTA chairman the greatest professional honor of his career. He passed the role to Kelly-Ann Payne, multi-property human resources director for the Marriott Barbados Collection, with a message of confidence: “The torch now passes to new leadership. And I pass it with immense pride, with complete confidence and with the absolute, unshakeable certainty that the greatest chapter in Barbados tourism has not yet been written. It is still ahead of us.”

Speaking at the opening session of the Caribbean Economic Forum on Thursday, Barbados Finance Minister Ryan Straughn issued a urgent call for stronger, unified collaboration to unlock regional domestic capital and draw high-value international investment, framing the push as a non-negotiable step to close the persistent gap in investment returns between the Caribbean and developed global markets and deliver shared, long-term prosperity for regional residents.

Straughn outlined a stark, long-overlooked economic disparity shaping the region’s growth prospects: while Caribbean households maintain among the highest savings rates in the Americas, the investment returns generated from those savings regularly fall to less than half the levels that investors in North American and European markets routinely enjoy. To address this inequity, he argued that regional financial and governance institutions must overhaul their collaborative frameworks to more effectively aggregate and mobilize local savings, ensuring Caribbean citizens can access the same equitable financial rewards that investors in other advanced jurisdictions take for granted.

“We have a duty to work alongside regional institutions to mobilize regional savings and direct them toward productive local investment, so that Caribbean people can earn returns equal or comparable to what their counterparts see elsewhere,” Straughn told attendees. “Given our region’s unique history of economic disenfranchisement, we would be failing every one of our citizens if we do not build this functional, inclusive mechanism for economic empowerment.”

The finance minister emphasized that building broad economic resilience across the region cannot be separated from delivering direct, tangible benefits to ordinary working people. Creating a stable, transparent regulatory and policy ecosystem to attract reputable international financial partners, he explained, is not just a goal for policymakers—it is the foundation for unlocking untapped local talent and nurturing intergenerational prosperity.

“Generating durable wealth that can be passed from one generation to the next is a core pillar of building long-term societal and economic resilience for all people,” he said. “Every policy decision we make must be deliberate and intentional, because the future of our citizens and the future of the entire Caribbean depends on us building that right ecosystem to attract the right partners to work alongside our communities.”

Highlighting Barbados’s own progress in fiscal reform as a proof of concept for regional action, Straughn announced that the country has cut its national debt-to-GDP ratio dramatically in recent years, dropping from a peak of 178% to 93.3% by the end of March 2024. He noted that if not for widespread economic disruptions triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the ratio would have already fallen to 84%, a milestone that has created new fiscal space to develop safe, high-impact investment assets that blend private capital, multilateral development bank funding, and philanthropic resources.

Turning to pressing regional challenges, Straughn zeroed in on the rapidly rising cost of climate-related reinsurance, a burden that he says is disproportionately siphoning much-needed capital out of the Caribbean. The region, which sits on the frontline of accelerating climate change impacts, has seen premiums surge in recent years as global insurance pools reallocate capacity to high-risk markets in places like Florida and California. Straughn urged global insurance industry leaders and private sector stakeholders to partner with the region to redirect a share of these annual premium payments into critical climate-resilient regional infrastructure, including renewable energy projects, water security systems, and upgraded transportation networks.

“We feel climate change first-hand here on the frontline, but we also feel it directly on our national balance sheets, as insurance premiums climb higher year after year,” Straughn said. “Redirecting a portion of these premium flows into strategic investment will be critical to unlocking the capital we need to solve our most pressing challenges, from energy access to water security to transportation and beyond.”

Innovation in sustainable industry remains a central pillar of Barbados’s national economic strategy, Straughn added, pointing to emerging projects across the country’s iconic rum sector and agricultural industry as proof of concept. He highlighted an innovative initiative led by Sargassum that converts invasive seaweed waste into low-carbon biofuel, a project designed to insulate the Barbadian and broader Caribbean economy from volatile global oil prices and disruptive geopolitical shocks that roil energy markets.

Straughn closed by framing the Caribbean Economic Forum as a platform for tangible, deal-driven action rather than empty discussion, positioning the gathering as a key complement to the broader Bridgetown Initiative, which advocates for sweeping reform of the global international financial architecture to better support vulnerable developing nations.

“This is not a talk shop,” Straughn said of the forum. “It is a space for us to stand together with a firm commitment to solving problems on behalf of the Caribbean people. Sharpen your pencils, and let’s get these deals done for the benefit of all our communities.”