$10 Tax Proposed for Caribbean Airline Tickets

SAN JUAN, Puerto RicoTravel Agent was on hand for a press conference at the 2010 Caribbean Marketplace, hosted by the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), where members proposed a $10 tax on all airline passengers to the Caribbean.

CHTA strongly suggests that the Caribbean Tourism Orangization (CTO) revisit the recommendation for a tax on airline passengers (first proposed in 2007) and that it use the precedent that has been set by the Travel Industry Association in the U.S., which recently instituted a $10 ticket tax to fund its U.S. marketing and promotion efforts worldwide. CHTA further suggests that a $10 ticket tax on all airline tickets for incoming passengers could be effectively split to enable individual governments to use $5 of each tax for its own destination marketing while allocating the other $5 to a sustainable marketing fund for the region. Unity of the private sector is reflected in the current success of Caribbean Marketplace, which has a total of 1,311 delegates in attendance, just slightly down from the 1,521.

“The concern is that we see no reason to tell you that 2010 is going to be any better than 2009,” says Alec Sanguinetti, CEO and director general of CHTA.

CHTA President Enrique De Marchena Kaluche called for a “unity for action.” “We cannot have seven islands taking action and the rest of the islands thinking about taking action,” he says.

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