Barbados Tourism Minister Announces Support For New Ticket Tax

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

19 December 2001

Following the CARICOM Summit On Tourism , Barbados' Minister of Tourism, Noel Lynch, has announced that he is behind the proposal to impose an additional tax on airline and cruise line tickets.

Although this may seem a slightly counter-intuitive move to make in the post-September 11th slowdown, especially for a country which relies so heavily on tourism for revenue, the Minister insists that there is method in his madness. Earlier this week, he revealed that the additional revenue generated by the new 'ticket tax', if implemented, will go to fund a sustained regional marketing programme, designed to put the tourism sector back on track.

'We need to find a way to reposition the industry in terms of all its components and we must find a way to sustainably fund the marketing campaign,' Mr Lynch explained to the Barbados Nation News on Monday.

Marketing experts have predicted that the cost of launching and sustaining a regional marketing campaign to promote the Caribbean brand could be in the region of US$40 million per year.

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