As Barbados seeks to rebuild its slowly re-emerging tourism industry, one industry veteran is warning officials to be careful not to price themselves out of the market.This caution has come from tourism consultant Dr Kerry Hall, who said the mature destinations seemed “stagnant” while developing ones were “surging ahead” as they emerged from the debilitating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic which brought the industry to a standstill in 2020 and 2021.“If we work better together, I think we will see a lot more benefits for the region. We also have an issue with a tired product. We need to look at our product, look at the price index of our product because in many ways I think we are pricing ourselves out of the market,” suggested Hall.“There is one thing being an expensive destination and we call ourselves aspirational for many years, but when value for money is not perceived you become an overpriced destination and people have realised, and this started from back in the great recession of 2008, when they could go somewhere else and get better services or product at a cheaper price than Barbados,” she argued.
