PRIME MINISTER David Thompson's budgetary blend of heartening concessions and heavy taxes has elicited an equally mixed response from Barbados Hotel & Tourism Association (BHTA) executive vice-president Sue Springer.

Within 12 hours after the Financial and Budgetary Proposals were presented in the House of Assembly, several sectoral representatives convened a post-Budget discussion at Hilton Barbados yesterday morning over breakfast.

Springer was one of them, and she hit hard at Government's 1 000 per cent increase in visitor driving permits that would be moving from $10 to $100.

"People might think that we are making a mockery of their visit," she posited, adding that car rental services would likely see a cut in the average four-day rental per customer.

She lauded Government's planned injection of an additional $10 million into the restructured marketing programme of the Barbados Tourism Authority to better position the island in the global tourism industry.

However, this sum is inadequate to meet the high cost of advertising and growing level of international competition, she said.

"We also welcome the commission of the Tourism Development Act that will assist all of tourism.

Thompson had said: "The Tourism Development Act will also be amended to provide a graduation of concessions to be granted to tourism-related investments on the basis of the local value added that accrues to Barbados from those tourism-related investments."

The BHTA boss pointed to other tourism challenges issuing from the Budget, such as the additional 50 per cent tax charge on alcohol that "would definitely impact in a very negative way our all-inclusive product", the increase in liquor licences "especially for the small properties, from 26 to 50 bedrooms, that have gone from $2 500 to $3 750 and for 51 to 100-bedroom properties from $5 000 to $7 500".

"To a lot of you [who] deal with a lot of financing that might not seem like much money, but to a small property that is struggling already with all its utility charges, it is one more charge and one more cost," she insisted.

Springer was also peeved by licences for banking and insurance because "insurance is one of the highest costs for the tourism industry".

But she praised the gasoline ease for taxi operators, the opening up of duty-free business, and incentives for alternative energy and greening retrofitting. (SR)