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The murder of American Doctor, Gary Swank in the San Pedro Lagoon on Sunday is making headlines all across the US - and it’s having a major negative impact on Belize’s tourism industry.  From yesterday we’ve been receiving reports of cancellations and today those numbers are growing.

The issue is not so much that a tourist was killed - sadly, that has happened before, but it’s the place where it happened.  53 year old Dr. Swank was killed on the sea, returning from a day of fly fishing - which is one of Belize’s prize attractions.  His tour guide Mario Graniel was the target, and Swank was a witness - so he was killed as a sort of collateral damage.

That event has destroyed his family who arrived in Belize with him on Saturday - and now it’s damaging the tourism industry.  We asked the Executive Director of the Belize Tourism Industry Association about the cancellations and the wider concerns of industry stakeholders:

John Burgos - Exec. Dir, BTIA
"Since Monday yesterday, today cancellations have been consistent. People that were planning to come in November, December, January; already you talking about at least about 7 properties I have reported cancellations already. You know, this is a trickledown effect and people have been questioning, how can you guarantee the safety of my family and myself if I'm in Belize, in San Pedro. It's a serious issue for which we really have to look at how we can fix this problem. We don't want to see an economic down turn of tourism because once you see it trickling down, how do we bring it up, how do we fix it."

Jules Vasquez
"But internationally, my feeling is that the statement put out by the tourism board yesterday was woefully inadequate in terms of you can't put that internationally. Internationally, there needs to be a crisis communication response if Belize is going to send out a message that it is safe for visitors and what happened was an exceptional event with particular circumstances that do not evoke a hazard on the sea. Is that message being effectively communicated internationally?"

John Burgos
"Unfortunately, Jules at this point I haven't seen that message, so obviously the message is not available. We do hope that considerations are being given to present something and that's the reason why I would love for the commissioner, the Minister of National Security to come out and say listen, we looking at this nationally with national strategies with as much resources as possible to find solutions."

Tonight, Burgos is in San Pedro for a town meeting with the Commissioner of Police. The area representative Junior Heredia and the Mayor Danny Guerrero have asked Commissioner Williams to make a presentation to townspeople - some of whom we are told will be picketing to protest police ineffectiveness on the island.  Burgos told us what he hopes comes out of the meeting: 

John Burgos
"I am flying in a few moments to San Pedro, the Compol, the Minister of Tourism and the Mayor Guerrero is going to be present, they are opening as a public meeting to address. I'm not sure what the commissioner is going to share this evening but I'm really looking forward to having something positive to be presented. I'm really hoping that the Compol understands the seriousness of the situation and how it's already trickling down to negative economic impact on the tourism ministry. Which as you know, you know the numbers of people are employed, you know that over 40 percent of the GDP, we cannot afford that."

The meeting starts at 7:00 pm at San Pedro High School - and we’ll show you how it went in tomorrow’s newscast.