Category: BHA News

Abaco Beach Resort and Boat Harbour Marina in The Bahamas has announced the appointment of Brent Ingraham as the director of sales and marketing.
…Continue readingAbaco Resort Appoints New Executive

The Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Association (CHTA) is celebrating the announcement by British Chancellor George Osborne which reforms the United Kingdom’s current four-band system for the Air Passenger Duty (APD) to a two-band system.  Under the new two-band system all long-haul flights (over 4,000 miles) will be moved into band B, which means UK customers traveling to the Caribbean will pay the same tax as if they were traveling to the United States.  The change is expected to take place April 1, 2015

…Continue readingCaribbean Flights To Be Taxed Same As U.S.

Hotel sector representatives that complain about value-added tax (VAT) are simply “greedy and never satisfied”, according to a top regional VAT expert, who argued that it is the quality of the product and not the rate of tax applied to it that will determine a destination’s competitiveness.
…Continue readingVAT Expert: Anti-VAT Hoteliers ‘Never Satisfied’

Over the past nine years 104 hotel industry scholarships valued at $428,000 have been awarded to Bahamian students, thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA), the Bahamas Hotel Employers Association (BHEA) and the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Education Foundation (CHTAEF). 
…Continue readingDeadline Fast Approaches For 2014 Tourism Scholarships

Emphasizing the tourism sector’s “strong opposition” to a July 1 value-added tax (VAT) implementation date, Frank Comito, executive vice president of the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA), said that no major hotels have yet felt prepared to begin investing in the technology and other upgrades they would need to implement the tax.
…Continue readingNo Hotels Yet Prepared To Upgrade For VAT

Cruise arrivals to The Bahamas have grown by 76 percent between 2000 and 2012, according to data recently released, with overall revenue generated from cruise arrivals ballooning by over 850 percent to just under $400 million per annum over the same period.
…Continue readingCruise Passenger Spending Grows 850 Percent

Concerns about value-added tax (VAT) expressed by Barbados Central Bank Governor Delisle Worrell underscore the importance of approaching VAT or any tax reform “with great caution and the value of broad public and private sector stakeholder collaboration and buy-in up-front,” according to the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association.
…Continue readingBHTA: Governor’s Comments Shows Need For ‘Great Caution’ On VAT