Price a deterrent to regional travel

IT is not fair to assume that price is the only hindrance to regional travel in the Caribbean. Yet the impact of Redjet’s operations to the increase in air-travel - and its absence to its decline – is a clear indication that when people see an opportunity to travel at a lower price, they will take it.

This was one of several views shared by Hugh Riley, Secretary-General of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation during a recent panel discussion on the state of the regional aviation sector. Riley shared the panel with Ian Brunton, CEO of LIAT; Neville Boxill, Aviation Consultant with the Barbados Tourism Association; and Patricia Alfonso-Dass, President of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association.

“When Redjet came into the mix, the net result was that it was a thing that inspired travel... travel went up considerably,” noted Riley, who stated that the opposite was true when the carrier left the market. He opined that this was a clear indication of a message being sent by the consumer to decision and policy makers. “When u give me a choice, and a price that I think I can afford, I am going to get on a plane!”

Choosing not to get into the argument of the profitability or sustainability of Redjet at that particular time, Riley suggested that the current inter-regional travel numbers were saying that consumers did not feel the price was right at present. He contended that there was a significant falloff in the 1.5 million persons travelling around the region in the last five years and that though we are gradually digging our way out of the slump, “we were not going to reach [where we were before] if the price of a ticket increases to a point which people [think] is unreasonable”. As it stood, he suggested, people were reasoning “[why] bother with inter-regional travel when for a little bit more I can go out of the region all together and …go to Miami [for example]”. (RA)