Belize Tourism Officials Prepare for Future Growth

Access to Belize will expand significantly in November when JetBlue launches nonstop flights between Belize City’s Philip S.W. Goldson International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

To date, Belize’s 2023 visitor arrivals remain relatively flat (May’s land-based arrivals totaled 32,871 travelers, a 0.4 percent decline compared with May 2022). However, the country’s U.S.-based arrivals remain strong.

Americans accounted for 72.5 percent of Belize’s overnight visitors in May, according to Belize Tourism Board (BTB) officials. BTB reports 150,206 U.S. travelers visited the country during the month. Belize is also one of a handful of Caribbean destinations that attracts both land-based and cruise ship visitors.

Anthony Mahler, Belize’s minister of tourism and diaspora relations, took office in 2020 following the decade-plus tenure of his predecessor, Manuel Heredia. TravelPulse spoke with Mahler recently to learn how his ministry will support Belize’s future tourism development.

TP: How is the country performing in terms of visitor arrivals this year?

AM: We’re trending around at 91 percent of where we were 2019, maybe a little bit higher than the average.

TP: What brings visitors to Belize?

AM: I don’t think there’s any other destination in the world that could match what we have to offer here in such a small [area]. My short statement to [travelers] is ‘Easy to reach, more than just beach.’

We have been using our culture, the diversity of our people and all of these things to spread the name Belize and to attract visitors to our country. We have a diverse product and people.

TP: Where are the travelers coming from?

AM: Our largest market is North America by far. We see over 80 percent of our business coming from the United States and Canada.

TP: How has your administration sought to support Belize’s tourism growth?

AM: Ever since we got into government two years ago, our focus has been to attract new airlines to the country [and] new airlift from certain markets in the United States. We want to ensure we can keep on a growth path as we move forward.

TP: What improvements are necessary to ensure Belize can manage visitor growth?

AM: We understand that the dynamics in Belize have to change a bit. We have 900 hotels with 9,000 rooms. So the average size of a hotel is 10 rooms. That has its charm, but as you move forward and you want to be competitive on a global standpoint, you need to have a larger room stock and a better room stock.

And so that has been our approach, to talk to investors and developers and brands to ensure we have adequate rooms.

TP: Are there new hotel projects in Belize’s future?

AM: So, [we have] the Four Seasons being built, and the Six Senses being built. We’re talking to some other developers who can add high-end rooms across the country. We believe that with the quality of our destination and the resources we have, there is no other destination that could compete with us.

TP: Are there plans to improve Belize’s tourism infrastructure?

AM: We know there are certain infrastructure [elements that needs to be improved so we’re working on that. I recently got an approval to float a bond [for] some basic infrastructure. The country looking to do another bond [via] another agency I oversee.

TP: How has the African American market played into Belize’s tourism growth in recent years?

AM: When I got [into office], I sat down with our marketing director to tell her we should focus on Atlanta. The Black traveler market is important in that area. They’re highly professional and they want to experience the world.

Two years later, Atlanta is [our] third-leading city. Being the minister of diaspora relations, it’s a big market for us. [Black Belezians’] native strings are still attached to Belize.

It’s an easy market for us because there is a decent-sized population of 400,000 to 750,000 Belizeans living in Atlanta and other places in the United States.

TP: Belize hosted 1.7 million passengers as recently as 2019, according to Caribbean Tourism Organization data. How has the segment performed in 2023?

AM: If you look at the sizes of the ships being built now, the [largest] ships get the bulk of the visitation. We don’t have a docking facility, so larger ships bypass Belize and go to Roatan and Cancun. As soon as we get our docking facility here, we’ll see the numbers start going up once again.

TP: There’s a lot of litigation surrounding the effort to build a port in Belize, correct?

AM: To be honest there’s an all-out war among [various] entities. There’s all sorts of litigation. There’s a project already halfway done on a small offshore island. [Passengers] will still have to tender in the short term if they don’t build a causeway.

There’s another project going on that we believe is a serious, viable project because you have serious people at the table [including] Royal Caribbean. So there are serious players at the table and hopefully all of this mess will be sorted out and we can look these things over and make the right decisions.