Can Sports Tourism Reverse Belize’s Slowdown?

Could sports help Belize fill hotel rooms when beaches and traditional attractions are not enough? Overnight arrivals fell by five percent in June, and Tourism Minister Anthony Mahler says the slowdown continued in the months that followed. While the industry looks to the approaching high season and additional flights for a rebound, government is also exploring new ways to attract visitors during traditionally slower periods. Sports tourism is now part of that strategy, with plans to improve facilities and pursue international events. After attending the UN Tourism Sports Tourism Summit in Mexico City, Mahler says Belize has already made connections that could help turn the idea into real opportunities.

 

Anthony Mahler, Minister of Tourism

“If you look at tourism on a whole globally, it’s about twelve to thirteen trillion dollars in revenues. If you look at sports globally, it’s 2.5 trillion, but sports tourism is about a trillion dollars. So what we want to do is to continue to push forward in terms of improving our facilities, whereby we can host more and more events here i- in Belize. I think we can carve out a niche that can help boost tourism, especially in the softer months especially if we have more indoor facilities. I was invited as a panelist and they heard about Belize, they heard about sports in Belize, and that then triggered off, without being planned, a one-on-one with UN Tourism Secretary General. And we spoke for about two hours, and I educated her about Belize. They’re talking about wanting to have a visit to Belize. And then we met also the regional director for UN Tourism, who is based in Brazil, and he wants to get involved with what we’re doing here in Belize in terms of sports and tourism. So we made a lot of links. I also took some of the federations to Mexico to meet with their counterparts, and those meetings were very high level, and we believe that we can produce some good things out of those meetings.”

 

Sports tourism has been floated before in Belize, but Anthony Mahler may be uniquely positioned to explore the sector as Belize’s first Minister of Tourism and Sports. 

 

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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