Tourism Uptick Minimal as Global Factors Impact Travel

Earlier this week, a popular restaurant in the San Ignacio area, Cayo District, shared a social media post expressing concern that, despite official data, they have not observed an increase in tourism. They noted that customer traffic has remained low this season. Minister of Tourism Anthony Mahler acknowledged that while tourism is currently up by 1%, the growth has been modest due to a range of global factors affecting many countries.

Anthony Mahler, Minister of Youth and Sports: “From the first five months that we’ve seen we’re up by 1%. May was a bit soft and I think the next couple of months will be difficult but we will ensure that we do everything possible to have the numbers don’t go down or don’t go down much at all. I just got back from an investment conference for hotels and the entire talk was about the uncertainty all around us and what that creates is a drying up of liquidity, people’s 401ks have been destroyed for the most part and so they don’t have that liquidity in their own lives to be able to take luxury vacations like what Belize offers.”

The months of December to April are typically considered high seasons for tourism.