Impact of ICC Men’s T20 World Cup on Barbados: Analysis and Reflections

Here we are almost at the end of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup tournament. The first ball was bowled at Kensington Oval on Sunday, June 2 when Namibia faced off against Oman.

So far, we have had eight games played here five in the group stage and three in the Super Eights. One game, on Tuesday, June 4 was affected by the weather and only 10 overs of bowling was played resulting in the game being abandoned. Saturday will see the final game of the tournament being staged and the final game in Barbados at the Mecca.

But the excitement evident at the beginning of the month-long tournament has fizzled. Some may say this is largely due to West Indies being knocked out of the World Cup when defending champions England beat them by eight wickets in the Super Eight stage, and then England not making the final following their defeat at the hands of India on Thursday.

A large number of West Indies fans prefer England in the final. After all, not only is Barbados referred to as Little England, but our largest tourist market is the United Kingdom. The Brits frequent our island and spend thousands of pounds sterling here.

There is no doubt that they come to have a merry time and often spare no costs on hotel, food, drinks, entertainment and the like.

However, it has been reported that the private sector has not seen any major spin-off benefits from hosting the global event so far.

Chairman of the Barbados Private Sector Association (BPSA) Trisha Tannis said the World Cup has not drummed up business beyond what was normal for this time.

“We all assumed a very static situation where we would have 30 000 visitors every day for a month, but that certainly has not been the reality,” she is reported to have said. “One interesting barometer is the fact that hired cars are still available and normally that does not happen in peak season. So, based on those tests, it is hard to say that this is translating into peak business. It may be better than normal for this time of year, but generally speaking it has underperformed expectations.”

The BPSA chairman noted that further analysis must be done to better understand visitor patterns for an event of this nature, ensuring that expectations can be better tempered in the future.

“I think by now we were hoping for what would have been some last-minute impetus, but from what I am hearing and experiencing, there is not a lot that is happening over and above normal. People have been travelling and what would be interesting to see is what those travel patterns were, how long people stayed on a particular island, and who went home because their team did not make it through. These are factors which we must take into consideration,” she noted.