AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums The Cayes Ambergris Caye Where are all the tourists?

It will most likely get worse before it improves..........if it ever does........you will never see tourism like it has been in the past 5 years.......those days are long gone..........the fantastic world is gone.

I will post on this tomorrow when I am a little more cognizant ...I have had no sleep for 30 hours. January was an interesting month in SP.

Jesse a good point I see lots of things happen to people who are reactive ,not proactive .you see peter you need to be like the sea turttle if your going anyware you got to stick your neck out lol ..What I am saying you have to market yourself to make it happen ..MARKETING IS THE KEY .Jesse is on the money ..

Marketing will help to improve your relative position, but will do very little to improve the overall business pool. The businesses I am referring to are very pro-active, well established and well run, yet are inevitably affected by the overall downturn in tourism.

PETER RIGHT .???????????????????

Marketing will very rarely HURT though. It's far too simple to throw our hands in the air and say "Well, why bother? The economy is bad". Tourism will always have ups and downs because travel is a luxury not a priority for most people...end of story. The worst thing to do in regards to marketing is nothing. You must ride it out and keep your name on the tip of everyone's tongue. And for the love of Pete, try and remain positive, avoiding the Eeyore Syndrome.

I am going to jump in here and comment on the airfare
I am bringing about 20 people in late Feb and we wound up paying about $580 r/t. Of that 580 I believe about 200 was taxes. As a matter of fact the taxes went up $60 in Dec. IF and only IF the Belizean gov. wants to make tourism a priorty they need to reduce their taxes. I have traveled quite a bit in the last 15 years or so and I have never seen the tax rate on an ailine ticket so high. That being said EVERYTHING ELSE I have booked in Belize has been, I believe, a good value. So maybe the gov needs to step back and see the big picture. Get the people in and they will spend the money. WHy do you think cellular phone companies give away $300 phones? So they can make the money on the service.
Maybe that is not the point though.
Maybe Belize does not want too many tourist. That would be okay. It just goes against everything I was taught in business school.
We are flying from Tulsa,Oklahoma City, and Tampa by the way and the Tampa ticket was the cheapest!!! Go figure.

am bringing about 20 people in late Feb and we wound up paying about $580 r/t.

$580.00 is well below anything I have seen in a while. I just paid $740.

Some boarders here have done the airline tax breakdown before and it turned out that Belize's airport taxes are far less than most places.