As officials broke ground on Tuesday to make way for the new Hotel Indigo on the south of the island, Prime Minister Mia Mottley gave the assurance that Barbados’ ageing tourism product is in line for a major transformation with new hotel construction and continued upgrading of old properties.Mottley said her government was prepared to build on the $300 million Barbados Employment Sustainability and Transformation (BEST) programme, which propped up the tourism industry during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, by working closely with the private sector to refresh the industry.“We have done reasonably well, but the government is now intent on building on that because the kind of tourism product we have cannot take us much further into the 21st century without new investment and without refurbishment of the existing plants,” she said.“That is what the Government is focused on and shall be working with members of the private sector to be able to see how we can reposition this tourism sector we have in order to have that capacity to deliver,” she said.The BEST scheme was introduced in September 2020 to keep some 60 per cent of tourism industry workers employed at 80 per cent of their 2019 salary for at least one year, as the pandemic virtually wiped out any business in the industry during 2020 and much of 2021.
