Air Passenger Duty Hits Caribbean Flight Sales

Air Passenger Duty Hits Caribbean Flight Sales

Searches for major Caribbean destinations such as Jamaica and Barbados have slumped following last year’s rise in Air Passenger Duty, according to Cheapflights. With the tax due to increase again on November 1, Cheapflights has revealed that searches on its website for the eight most popular Caribbean destinations have fallen by 11.6 percent for the 12 months to the end of September 2010 compared to the previous year.

Searches for Jamaica were down 13 percent over the same period while Barbados also saw a drop of 23 percent. The Caribbean Tourism Organization has said that UK arrivals have dropped by 12.2 percent since the APD rise in November 2009 and fear that next week’s rise in the tax will further affect business.

Francesca Ecsery, Cheapflights’ global sales director, said: “APD is a regressive tax and it is evident that it hurts not only those consumers least able to afford it, but also all those economies dependent on tourism from the UK.

“Faced with such statistics, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that APD is having a significantly negative effect on travel from the UK to the Caribbean.”

Carol Hay, Caribbean Tourism Organization’s director of marketing for UK and Europe, said: “We are very concerned to hear of the variance in Cheapflights UK’s year-on-year search traffic for Caribbean destinations since the launch of the four tier Air Passenger Duty last November.

“We appreciate there may be many factors at play in such statistics; however it adds weight to our argument to politicians that all destinations and all British travelers are being affected by such high taxation.”