7 News Belize

COVID Causing Cancellations
posted (March 11, 2020)

And, while cruise tourism is seeing reduced arrivals, overnight tourism is witnessing cancellations.  We spoke to the president of the Belize Hotel Association:

Ted Tejada - President BHA
"The cancellation rate for Belize went up from normal cancellation for this time of the year is around 18%. As of today the cancellation rate is at 26%, so definitely we are already seeing the impact of North Americans saying what happens if I come to Belize, I'm already with the virus and they do not allow me to go back home. It's not much of a cancellation that we're seeing; it's more of postponement of their trips. The concern from the European market has been huge, the North American market just got alerted recently, I would say as of Friday we started to see cancellations. As you know Belize gets a lot of its reservations from the United States and the second largest market would Canada. These markets, Canada, has a very low impact at this moment, 97 cases, the United States has about 1,000 but as you know the population is huge. I think it has been blown out of proportion in terms of the virus itself. The death rate of the virus is very minimal. We shouldn't panic with this situation, we should exercise preventative maintenance, every hotel should look and design a plan. What would I do if a case would to present itself, we are working with the Ministry of Health in designing what does a hotel do in case a guests comes in and report that he is not feeling well. The Biltmore hotel for example have designed a plan that we will be sharing with the entire members of the hotel association so that they can realise that each hotel has to have its own plan and protect its employees first of all and their guests as well because as you Belize depends on tourism. So we're asking all of our hoteliers do not panic, work on a plan, prepare yourself, the cleanliness is the most important."

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