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Published on : Thursday, September 3, 2020
This year was supposed to be a great year for Barbados-based, tourism-dependent for small business ventures.
These include beach-front apartments, organic farm-to-table café and others for promoting food security and land rehabilitation.
A Barbadian entrepreneur said, “We broke even for the first time last December, and recorded profits in January and February this year. We were also able to start paying off the debts we incurred during the 2008 recession.”
The entire tourism sector is promising, and hence, optimism for 2020 was sky high.
But hopes dashed when, in March, tourism came to a standstill, with Barbados shutting down its borders and announcing a complete lockdown for curbing the spread of the pandemic. This proved to be disastrous for all tourism businesses across the small island nation.
With no tourists, and restricted movement of locals, tourism-dependent businesses had to close doors and lay off their staff.
This experience is common worldwide. The blow to tourism is putting the world’s third largest export sector (after fuels and chemicals) and 100 million direct jobs at risk. The United Nations spoke regarding how the pandemic is affecting and changing tourism worldwide.
For small island developing states (SIDS), tourism accounts for around 80% exports; hence, the impacts of the pandemic are overwhelming.
The UN said that a policy solution is needed to alleviate the impacts on livelihoods, especially for women, youth and informal workers, and it should be balanced with ensuring health as a priority, with well-coordinated heath protocols.