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And while a quarantine would be a major problem for tourism on the peninsula, that didn’t even make it on the agenda today at the Belize Hotel Association’s 2019 Annual General Meeting. They’ve got bigger fish to fry right now.  

The focus for this AGM was all about revenue management, and how to increase the annual earnings of all hotel owners - an an era when services like Airb’nb are cutting into their overnight market.  

So, to help them be more efficient, their executives invited some of the top performing tourism experts from around the world, to offer some of their tried and tested advice. 

7News stopped by the Biltmore today were we spoke with the Association’s President, who told us that the local tourism industry is now adapting the use of technology to be more cost efficient:

Ted Tejeda - President, Belize Hotel Association
"Building in Belize City, and San Pedro is very expensive. In Belize City, it would cost you around $100,00 to complete a room. So, if you have an amount of rooms, and you’re not building this year, you want to increase your revenue every year, at least by the inflation rate of 3.5%. So, with the same amount of rooms that you have, we brought some experts to tell you how can you increase your revenue, without having to build. One of the things that we need to do is actually study the pacing. What is the pacing? You have to look at the historic information. What are the events that are coming to Belize City, or what is coming to San Pedro, or example Costa Maya coming into San Pedro. Historically, you know that your rooms will sell out 1 year in advance. So, if you know those rooms will sell out because of the event coming up, you need to increase your rates. Because, even if you increase your rates, you will still end up selling those rooms. So, those are some of the tactics we have, the software that these people have that predicts and tells you, ‘People are shopping. Your inventory is selling very fast, you need to crank up your weight by 5 - 10%. So, it’s using software to predict what’s coming tomorrow, so that you can take advantage."

Reporter
"So you guys are now incorporating technology into the way the hotel business is running."

Ted Tejeda
"That is correct, as this technology was actually invented by the airlines. Presently, a lot of our members - because 50% of our hotels are very small in the country of Belize. They do not have the revenue to invest in marketing. So, what technology does - they are practically using actual physical human being, to shop online, and make these graphs, which takes hours and days, when you have technology that might cost you a fraction of what that salary is, and will help you make better decisions."