De­spite the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­creased de­mand for flights in­to the re­gion, Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion chair­man Ian Good­hill-Edghill is warn­ing that the cur­rent spike in jet fu­el prices could se­ri­ous­ly im­pact tourism. Jet fu­el prices across the globe have surged due to the US/Is­rael-Iran con­flict, dou­bling air­lines’ fu­el bills and forc­ing them to in­crease tick­et prices, cut routes and ca­pac­i­ty, and in­tro­duce fu­el sur­charges in some in­stances.

Re­gion­al air­lines have not been spared; Sint Maarten-based Winair is re­port­ed­ly weigh­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of a fu­el sur­charge af­ter its fu­el bill al­most dou­bled from US$550,000 in Feb­ru­ary to near­ly US$900,000 in March. Lo­cal car­ri­er Caribbean Air­lines in­tro­duced a US$15 to US$25 sur­charge per sec­tor on April 10.

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “chal­leng­ing”, Good­hill-Edghill told Guardian Me­dia that, de­spite it be­ing ear­ly days, the or­gan­i­sa­tion con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor de­vel­op­ments. He said, “We don’t have enough in­for­ma­tion at this point, be­cause you would ap­pre­ci­ate that there are cus­tomers who would have booked, so they’re in the for­ward book­ing sphere. We have to mon­i­tor the for­ward book­ings as a re­gion, and cer­tain­ly Bar­ba­dos is do­ing that, to see what knock-on im­pact, if any, it’s like­ly to have.”