Barbados TODAY has learnt that Minister of Tourism Richard Sealy is part of a high-powered regional delegation journeying to the UK between Monday and Wednesday next week to lobby against the imposition of the tax from November, one month before the traditionally strong winter tourist season starts.

While there the officials will meeting with representatives from Britain’s young coalition government led by Prime Minister David Cameron. They will also hold discussions with airline bosses, many of whom have been supported of the region’s efforts to get an ease from APD.

Meetings will also be held with members of several other organisations, including the British Air Transport Association, major tour operators, Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA), the Caribbean Council, Caribbean Diaspora representatives and the British Caribbean All Party Parliamentary Group.

Reports said the Caribbean group, while aiming to put pressure on officials to change the tax structure for the benefit of the Caribbean, which was now disadvantaged because of its long distance from the UK, expected to get a more sympathetic ear than they did with the previous administration led by Gordon Brown.

The group also includes chairman of the Barbados-based Caribbean Tourism Organisation, Antigua and Barbuda’s Minister of Tourism, Civil Aviation and Culture, John Maginley; Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett; Grenada’s Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation, Glynis Roberts; St. Kitts & Nevis’ Minister of Tourism and International Transport, Senator Richard Skerritt; and St. Lucia’s Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation, Senator Allen Chastanet. CTO Secretary-General Hugh Riley is also making the trip to put the region’s case.

In an update on the trip released late this afternoon the CTO said the purpose of the visit by the Caribbean was essentially to “intensify its lobby for a fairer passenger tax system in the UK”.

It said at their meeting with the travel industry and Parliamentary bodies the delegation “the Caribbean delegation will be lobbying for a fairer alternative to the current APD system, which currently taxes flights from Britain to the Caribbean more heavily than travel to Hawaii, and is set to rise for the second time in a year within next two months”.

The CTO said the ministers “will be lobbying for their region, officially the most tourism-dependent in the world (14.5 per cent of the region’s GDP and for some islands over 70 per cent) to potentially be moved into the same band as the USA and Bermuda, or for the APD system to be replaced with a fairer structure”.

Riley said he was hopeful about the trip and expected the Caribbean to put its case strongly and convincingly.

“We feel that the size of the delegation which is coming to the UK on September 6 underscores the importance that the Caribbean attaches to this issue and the seriousness of our intent to minimise the possible damage that this second set of price increases will bring about,” he said.

In November two years ago the APD was changed into a four-tier band system, categorising destinations according to the distance between London and their capital city. From November this year, the tax on flights to the Caribbean would have risen by up to 94 per cent over two years, meaning that a family of four travelling to the region in premium economy will pay £600 in APD alone. (Barbados Today)