Ali­cia Llanos

British Min­is­ter of State for the For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Of­fice Je­re­my Browne says the high air pas­sen­ger du­ty (APD) tax is not the on­ly fac­tor af­fect­ing British tourism to the Caribbean. Browne was speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter the for­mal open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the UK Food and Bev­er­age Trade Mis­sion and Ex­hi­bi­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about re­duc­tion of British tourists vis­it­ing the Caribbean, Browne said the British Gov­ern­ment un­der­stood the po­ten­tial harm the APD was hav­ing on Caribbean tourism but the re­gion al­so need­ed to en­sure it was of­fer­ing the right prod­uct "in terms of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, the qual­i­ty of ho­tels, which in some ar­eas is bet­ter than oth­ers.

"I don't think the APD is the on­ly fac­tor that is worth think­ing about in terms of the tourism in­dus­try," said Browne, who added he was "pos­i­tive" about tourism on the whole and was see­ing trends mov­ing up­ward. He said he re­cent­ly held meet­ings with British Air­ways and Vir­gin At­lantic and both car­ri­ers planned to in­crease flights in­to the re­gion. "I am hop­ing the tourism sec­tor will con­tin­ue to grow but we need to make sure the fun­da­men­tals are right."

Browne said the British Gov­ern­ment un­der­stood the heavy trav­el tax­a­tion in­to the Caribbean was a con­sid­er­a­tion but point­ed out that oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions to im­prove tourism in­clud­ed the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of British tourists up­on their ar­rival in the re­gion. Browne said en­sur­ing such fac­tors were ad­dressed would pave the way for a healthy and thriv­ing tourism in­dus­try in the Caribbean.

Back­ground

In No­vem­ber 2009, the British Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed the APD tax to gen­er­ate much need­ed rev­enue.

Des­ti­na­tions were placed in class­es de­pend­ing on dis­tance and car­bon us­age. The Caribbean was placed in Class C with APD tax ris­ing from £75 to £150 a pas­sen­ger in tax­es. The Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) has pub­licly con­demned the tax­es and has ap­pealed to the British Gov­ern­ment to re­view the sys­tem of clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the Caribbean.