Sunil Chatrani: STOP Discounting!
Sunil Chatrani, BHTA
While not attending the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association Annual General Meeting recently, if media reports are accurate, the outgoing Chairman is quoted as stating ‘discounts were not the way to attract visitors to these shores’ […]. I have enormous respect for Mr. Chatrani (despite opting not to join the re-DISCOVER initiative) and in principal totally agree with this statement, however in reality we have a mountain to climb to change the current perception. Sadly across many of our markets we are generally considered as not offering value-for-money in our tourism industry and until the sector becomes more competitive this will not change. As a tour operator in Britain for 12 years, we learnt from the mistakes of others and did not discount a single holiday out of hundreds of thousands sold, other than for people booking and paying in full up to 18 months prior to departure. The year our company was formed in 1976, interest rates peaked at 15 per cent per annum and so we used our customer’s monies to partially subsidise commercial bank lending charges to grow the company. Every person who booked also knew that they were not going to get a cheaper holiday if they waited until the last minute, so to get the holiday they wanted required booking earlier and enabled us to plan better. It was a policy that we continued while operating our small hotel for 25 years.
If we are going to achieve Mr. Chatrani’s objective, we are going to have to fundamentally change the way we currently do business. As an example, if you take the often vaunted ‘masters’ of marketing, Sandals, they apply a markdown to almost every aspect of their product. Go to their website and prices are largely discounted by up to 65 per cent and that’s before you take into account, an air credit of US$1,000, resort credit of US$215, one night free (on certain rooms) and a further US$35 for booking online. For many this might indicate massive discounting is presenting the opportunity of a bargain. To me, I am afraid it just tells me that the original rates quoted are grossly overpriced.
I believe we have to get across the concept of offering a product that is truly value-for-money rather than maintain a second-hand car selling approach that tends to appeal more to a transient fickle segment of our potential customer base. But saying and doing this are two totally different challenges. Discounting has become an ingrained component in the travel and tourism industry and the practice isn’t going to disappear in the short to medium term.
Also in the case of Barbados, it cannot be achieved by the private sector alone. Government has to be an integral part of the process and ensure the promised concessions are fully implemented, before there will be any meaningful progress on the building block recovery road to viability. Until that is done, we are frankly left with no alternative or opportunity to avoid being forced sometimes to sell our product below its actual cost.
Barbados Underground 
if you get rid of crime you will never have to discount anything
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Seems to us you guys are running from pillar to post, not having a clue. But that will be alright. The idiots, the people of Barbados, are waiting to bail you IN or OUT. Which ever one it’s a good deal for a feckless industry leadership.
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Or both In and Out! All two both!
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If you are selling a run down product of decrepit buildings, a worn out Bridgetown, garbage ridden streets, crime and shootings in Bridgetown in broad daylight, police men who only walk the beat in St. Lawrence gap and Holetown, no level of discounts or anything else will sell what amounts to a graveyard tour WITH YOU AS THE POTENTIAL OCCUPANT, by way of a bullet or as a health casualty
The advertisements for Barbados should read “all uh we going die, sooner or lata, take your pick come to Barbados where AK 47, chickengunya or leptospirosis can Mek it sort of quick”
If de Merry Men sing a song bout it we could get the discerning visitors with greater discretionary spend, why you tink Loveridge??
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Seems these tourism guys cannot urinate without government’s help. All this Sandals bashing is becoming quite boring. Small black business people have to get up every morning and face the music: no help from commercial banks/government. Sixty years and the so-called hoteliers can do nothing but out price themselves and put all the blame at the governments’ feet.They run the (black)beach vendors; they shutdown the small (black) rental businesses, they mash up the small (black) taxi-men and tour operators; refuse to give qualified locals jobs; treat entertainers (black) like dirt…….I could go on and on . None so blind as he who would not see.
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On exchange rate alone it is about 30% more expensive for many tourists to visit Barbados than it was 5 years ago simply because of the fixed exchange rate of the Barbados dollar. Price matters in most decisions that are made on “where to go”…….it is the same sun shining on all beaches.
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Adrian
re your Sandals comments’
Of course “the original rates quoted are grossly overpriced”
All that 65% discounts and credits are just smoke and mirrors.
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BU understands this is the seaweed just off the West Coast, only a matter of time, a day or so?. Maybe then we will be galvanized into action.
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Dr. Philip Kotler defines marketing as “the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit. Marketing identifies unfulfilled needs and desires. It defines, measures and quantifies the size of the identified market and the profit potential. It pinpoints which segments the company is capable of serving best and it designs and promotes the appropriate products and services.”
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With “adaptations” to accommodate vessels traveling at night, including the drug runners, the floating barriers that I posted a few days back could be made into a proactive sargussum weed capturing mechanism and the offending weed could be captured and removed from the ocean, PRIOR TO IT FLOATING ONTO OUR BEACHES.
The same way that we were paying a bounty for every pound of african snails collected it could be determined that fee is paid for the collection of the weed.
But then again, that is a David Weekes suggestion and, as per usual, anything that that fellow weekes suggests is like the Ganga Seed in Bob’s famous song, “I shot the sheriff” it is A SEED THAT MUST BE KILLED IN THE BUD.
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@David Weekes,
When will you learn?
You need to get a white Canadian front man or woman to present your ideas.
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Another Patent of Mine
“Moments in Time © will give visitors the unique cultural experience of the places, memorable and spartan artifacts that defined the lives and depict the struggles and achievements of Caribbean society – its past seamlessly congealed with its present.
What is being proposed is a bespoke cultural heritage tourism product that welds cultural, historic and natural resources purposed to revitalize the various capitals and the respective tourism plants as a short term strategy.”
So with this patent as such relates to the UNESCO designation that Bridgetown stands to possibly loose I can take this decrepit structure of what a tourists sees now in “Historic Bridgetown
and present this
But lest you all forget what I have been saying for these 15 years, THE IDEA COMES FROM DAVID WEEKES AND WE MUST KILL THE SEED BEFORE IT GROW…..
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@ Hants
Why must it always be that we so hate “The Castle of our Skin” that like Fanon and now you suggest “However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion, I am obliged to state it: for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.?
What drives you Hants when you wake up and walk in this skeleton called body and sentience, each morning?
Why should it be that, every evening, before you reset the biological clock with this thing called “sleep”, why should it be that you and I must intone that mantra “for me to be successful I must find a white man, a Clare Cowan, for what we are to be seen by the world?
“Brutus and Caesar—what should be in that “Caesar”? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Write them together, yours is as fair a name. Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well. Weigh them, it is as heavy. Conjure with ’em,”
By your comment of 2.32 pm Mr Hants you have condemned close to 95% of the population of this land, black people like me whom Minister Sinckler in his parliamentary speech yesterday announced live in a country is guided by the Hand of GOD..
We I of a weaker stock I might also be inclined like Jupiter Hammon another negro like me with the dubious record of being the first published slave in 1760
Some even these 250 years hence preach his exact words “Respecting obedience to masters. Now whether it is right, and lawful, in the Sight of God, for them to make slaves of us or not, I am certain that while we are slaves, it is our duty to obey our masters, in all their lawful commands, and mind them unless we are bid to do that which we know to be sin, or forbidden in God’s word.” but unfortunately I am not so inclined..
Each day as we awaken to this somnambulistic existence in these fields and hill beyond recall that we call our very own, we rise a little closer to a date with anarchy and overt revolution that unlike the gentle bubbling of recalcitrant ZR drivers, IS NOT GOING TO STOP like an overturned ZR van on the hand of some poor woman child…but will cry for much more blood than an amputated hand offers to the earth…
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@david
One would think that protecting our number 1 FX producer wold be a top priority of the country. Apparently it is not. Our prime beaches are a disgraceful mess.
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@davidweekes,
I withdraw my comment to you.
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http://www.hbarber.com/Cleaners/SurfRake/Default.html
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@ Hants
I am a Bajan by birth and while it is, and continues to be, my daily plight to be on the shi**y end of those right that our constitution guarantees, I believe in the practical aspects of our national pledge.
Now do not get me wrong, I am not bewitched by the disconnect between the ideal of national contribution and the reality of a prevalent paucity in ‘solutions that work” instead of all the lotta long talk.
What I am absolutely committed to is a national practicuum under which ideas can be nurtured and brought from the heads of our innovators and inventors into the real world and generate sustainable jobs and $$.
Let me speak to practicuum.
We have been having this problem from the time i was a lad and going to the sea at Brandons when the beach was right behind the Berger Paint/ Mount Gay wall.
Now tell me, why is it that for 50 something years, we have not been able to put a practice in place where our Fisheries department had a national Sargassum Disposal practice that would address this annual, seasonal occurrence, a practice which would in conjunction with shredding by the HBARBER, COLLECT THE WEEDS, OFFSHORE FOR LATER SHREDDING!!
It is not every government that can allocate a fleet of tractors to pull HBARBERS while being exposed to the erosive power of sea water.
But i will go further.
What is the composting qualities of Sargassum? Any agriculture class at any one of secondary schools should be able to determine what the sargassum becomes when it decomposes, so tell me what has our University of the West Indies produced in support of a sargassum permaculture?
I am a very simple man Mr. Hants, devoid of any airs because as “imminent manure” in Westbury, I do not fool myself as to my longevity, and, unlike many of the demigods of our nation, I don’t have tomorrow put down.
I am driven by a tenet that my mother and father instilled in me “only remembered by what we have done” so, notwithstanding the cry “whu dat Weekes fellow talking bout agin??”, I will continue to speak in support of creating and promotion indigenous innovation and realistic meaningful inventions
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Adrian
Sandals Barbados full page ad in today’s Toronto Star.
Discounts reduced to up to 60%
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Thanks DD, it was reported during the Budget debate Sandals has placed some employees on a reduced work week.
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Meanwhile ,while our European/North American suited members of parliament were busy for the last 3 days thumping their chests over the increase in tourist arrivals and higher occupancy levels in the hotels, this is what we are subjecting our benefactors to, and on the most popular beach on the island, Rockley Beach
Tourism is our business, etc etc. The Bajan way, whatever that is , and NISE. All Empty Slogans
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David I was under the impression that a piece of equipment was being imported to deal with the sea weed on the beach.Was this like everything else, just talk ?
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davidweekes June 17, 2015 at 11:38 AM
The agricultural experts, at least those on CBC daily show, tell us that because of the high saline content, the sargassum seaweed is not suitable as a manure.
But strange enough, 80 to 90 % of the world agricultural fertilizers come from the Dead Sea, the worlds biggest and deepest hypersaline lake.
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@Colonel Buggy
So far we have seen caterpillar and MTW trucks doing the job.
On 18 June 2015 at 20:58, Barbados Underground wrote:
>
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Mr Colonel Buggy.
That is precisely the point that I am making “because of its Saline content IT IS NOT suited for manure…”
Let me put the matter in context.
1) every year our ocean spews out tons of sargassum on our beaches
2) it is an eyesore which requires two state agencies to deploy a not insignificant amount of machinery and labour to rectify
3) it also impacts on our number one revenue earner
4) Raking the beach is an archaic process, much like the hair brained garbage separation at plant, we should be separating at source or collecting as much of the weed offshore
5) God does not make mistakes and while we are driven by the idiocy of a statement of sargassum is not suited for manure, we proudly state what it is not suited for, but what is it suited for?
6) what happens when it decomposes naturally? Can I for example grind it fine and deposit it, with another item into the sides of our highways as a natural weed killer? Can I extend such environmentally sound practice to an island wide deployment of said compost across the tracts of land that are now overrun with bush? Can it be used to restrict the growth of cow itch?
One final observation Mr Buggy, do you note how Sargassum, in great quantity acts as a “pacifier” to the surf, and cresting waves in the sea?
Do you think that any of our mechanical engineers or oceanographers have the grey matter to make the link between wave attenuation as would be desirable during say a tsunami or beach erosion issue?
You see the problem Weekes has with this country which Mr. Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right calls cuntry, we simply HAVE NO VISION, a white man has to come and bring us Canute Dampers or something like this, but with $500 million a year in education, we will always be “hewers of wood and drawers of water….”
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Barbados has been recognised as a winner in the 2015 TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice awards for Islands, ranking third in the top ten of all competing island destinations. – See more at: http://www.nationnews.com/nationnews/news/68889/barbados-ranks-2015-tripadvisor-travellers-choice-awards-islands#sthash.UejtM7KR.dpuf
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discounting ha ha ha I was offered and apt in writing for 216 Canadian a night in another email the best rate is 4552 can . for 21 days which I agreed to Now they are saying the rate was 196 a night us and not the 4552 Canadian I agreed to so I must pay an additional 900 which they already have taken . The Barbados rip off machine is up and running. Don’t pay ahead for anything on the island. Tourists beware
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@Lawson,
You have the original email. They should have to honour the price quoted in that email.
If they don’t you can name and shame them on BU. lol
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Hants I booked this trip last sept.I had just stayed in a 3 bedroom at palm beach for cropover, but my kids wanted the gap this year so I booked early …I wanted to know the total cost in Canadian which was 4552 because that is what I deal in … thinking that was the agreed price for the three weeks, however it meant nothing…. since the Canadian dollar has dropped they want more money than I was told claiming we deal in us funds . Now I sent my family to the crane in dec another place twice in the last month my son and his buddies were there in feb I am bringing a bunch of friends down for kadooment but I hate feeling like someone is trying to fu*k me . Maybe I should have read the fine print maybe Cubans or Antiguans aren’t as slippery. lol looking forward to finding out , like MB I work hard for my money but I made the mistake of booking early and committing to there rental if I come there again rather than some other sargassum filled island it will always be a last minute.
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@ Lawson
Hope this is not the hotel which was involved in the Nigerian student fiasco.
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no it is in the gap , I thought they were reputable but they are getting cute… a couple of hundred dollars is no big deal to me but like a woman scorned the world is my oyster. I will put it in our travel section about the Barbados rip off artists , Havana chum has a nice ring to it….. this is the reason tourism is suffering on the island too many slick players trying to fuc8k Canadians for peanuts instead of seeing the big picture I am waiting to see if there has just been an error …but if is there mode operandi I will out them so you can see who is killing tourism.
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Barbados among tops on TripAdvisor
read and weep doom and gloomers
Barbados among tops on TripAdvisor
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