BermudAir Restores Belize-Fort Lauderdale Connection

Five months after Belize lost its direct link to Fort Lauderdale, another airline is stepping in, and it is bringing several new routes with it. BermudAir’s inaugural flight touched down today, restoring access to a key South Florida market and opening the door to four additional US destinations. Tourism officials say the expansion could bring more visitors, but filling those planes will require an aggressive marketing push. News Five’s Britney Gordon reports.

 

Britney Gordon, Reporting

When Spirit Airlines ended its Fort Lauderdale service in May, Belize lost an important connection to South Florida. Today, BermudAir restored that link, launching the first of five new routes planned ahead of the peak tourism season. Nicole Solano, CEO in the Ministry of Tourism, says the service resulted from ongoing efforts to attract new airline partners.

 

Nicole Solano, CEO, Ministry of Tourism

“There’s routine, regular communication with airlines, trying to present business cases for Belize to see where we can get new routes and which partners are best for Belize. So this is one of the outcomes of those discussions, and I think you may have seen last week with what we were doing in Frankfurt with the new flight from Europe. This is similar to that. There are ongoing discussions on a regular basis with many different airlines to try and see what we can do to develop new routes.”

 

BermudAir will operate the Fort Lauderdale service three times a week using a seventy-five-seat aircraft. Its first flight arrived with roughly half the seats filled, an encouraging start for a brand-new route. Director of Tourism Evan Tillett says every additional flight makes Belize easier to reach.

 

Evan Tillett, Director of Tourism, Belize Tourism Board

“I think any new air route is significant for the destination because air connectivity is the lifeblood of tourism. And so having options to come out of South Florida allows Belize to be even more accessible by our tourists and our travelers.”

 

Fort Lauderdale is only the beginning. BermudAir plans to launch nonstop flights from Tampa, Boston, Raleigh-Durham and Orlando in December. The airline says Belize’s beaches and rainforests made the country attractive, but strong support from government, the tourism industry and the airport helped seal the deal.

 

Andrea Spiegel, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, BermudAir

“Not only is it a stunning place as we look to kind of expand our boutique island aviation model, but I think just the natural, beautiful things that it offers both, and I’m learning, the beach and the rainforest experiences make it a unique destination. But honestly, I think that we look for places where there’s true partnerships within the community, within the government, within the airport, and Belize kind of stepped up to the plate in a big way. It just made it very easy for us to do business here.”

 

But launching the routes is only half the challenge. Keeping them in the air will depend on passenger demand. Solano says the Belize Tourism Board and BermudAir will promote the flights in the cities receiving direct service, as well as nearby markets that can feed passengers into those routes.

 

Nicole Solano

“Definitely marketing is a big part because we have to make sure that the people know about the new routes and they have an idea of how to get to Belize in a different way compared to how they used to come, right? So working along with the airline is a part of the strategy and looking at the feeder cities as well as the direct route from all of the cities I indicated. We do additional marketing. There’s quite a bit of activations and the marketing within the BTB works along with the airlines to get that done.”

 

The Boston-to-Belize route begins December nineteenth and will operate twice weekly through May first. Those flights will provide nonstop service to Belize before continuing to Guatemala. Britney Gordon for News Five.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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