This suggestion has come from secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace.
"Using airfare in order to make sure you increase economic activity is one tool we have forgotten how to use", said the CTO head as he delivered the keynote address during a Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry breakfast seminar last Wednesday.
Speaking on the topic Whither The Regional Airline Industry, Vanderpool-Wallace stressed that low-cost, high-quality air transport was the most important factor in expanding commercial activities and increasing the benefits from tourism figures in regional destinations.
The Bahamian tourism official said Caribbean islands could boost economic activity "by doing nothing else but delivering low-cost, high-quality air fare into the destination".
Vanderpool-Wallace illustrated his point by showing his audience at the Sherbourne Conference Centre how a destination with 8 000 rooms could earn an extra US$90 million simply by airlines cutting the fare to the destination by US$150.
He compared two travel packages from New York for a week's stay in Barbados, each worth US$2 000, but one with an airfare of US$500 and the other with a fare of US$350.
He noted that the package with the cheaper airfare could then incorporate a hotel with a higher room rate.
The CTO secretary general said the cheaper fare would allow a couple to stay at a 100-room hotel for $185 a day while the higher fare would allow a couple to pay $142.86 per day.
Couples would not feel the difference in their pockets because they bought US$2 000 packages, he pointed out, but if it enabled the hotel with the higher rate to maintain 70 per cent occupancy for the year, that property would have an extra US$1 million on its bottom line by year-end.
If, he explained, an 8 000-room destination could maintain 70 per cent occupancy across the board by this strategy, that is where the extra US$90 million per year would be found.
"You see, what many hoteliers forget is that, from the perspective of the prospective visitor, the total vacation cost includes the cost of getting there, which is the cost of the air fare.
"We become so focussed on average rates and visitor-spend at the destination that we see them as independent variables. They are not. They're very much a part of the variables," he said.
