LAST SATURDAY AFTERNOON, at the absolute busiest time of day, the Grantley Adams International Airport parking system broke down.

It caused chaos as cars could neither enter nor leave the parking area and backed-up traffic heading to the airport from both directions came to a complete standstill.

Instead of opening all barriers – for as long as it took to rectify the fault – whoever was in charge added to the problem by eventually allowing cars into the parking area one at a time with the admonition from the young woman manually lifting and closing the single barrier in use: "You have to go to the cashier's window to collect a card before you can leave."

That disastrously led to hundreds of people standing in line for up to an hour to get the card at the single cashier's window in use. To call the ensuing confusion a mess would be a crass understatement.

That wasn't all.

Finally allowed in the parking area but over an hour later than anticipated, I rushed across to the arrivals area to meet my guests coming from New York.

No sign of them at 3:30 p.m. even though their plane had landed on time at 2:30 p.m. They finally emerged at 3:50 p.m. after standing in line for 90 minutes to clear immigration.

And Barbados is a friendly, welcoming, all-embracing tourist destination?

– ENID WARD