Canada’s WestJet to Begin Service to Barbados

Barbados is about to get an additional influx of Canadian visitors through a new WestJet service that will start in November with four flights per week from Toronto, Canada, and cheaper fares than its competitors.

What adds to the soundness of this projection is the fact that the Canadian dollar continues to outperform the US dollar against which the Barbados currency is pegged.

Minister of Tourism, Richard Sealy told Barbados Business Authority “this service should excite everyone in the tourism sector in the fact that WestJet is very strong in western Canada. The connections would be good for Barbados because that section of Canada represents a growing economy… so it should bring a level of prosperity that we would want to tap into,” he said.

Moreover, Sealy noted that the new service would bring a level of competition for Air Canada “which has been having their way with it for some time”.

“A new service like this had to be properly thought out and we have to market around the service, like all new services. What has happened in the recent past is that we got the new service and then we seemed to have left it hanging and did not do as much as we should have in terms of marketing,” he said.