MONTEGO BAY, St James — United Kingdom travel agents say the controversial Air Passenger Duty (APD) has made Jamaica a hard sell, even to some persons who are accustomed to visiting the island up to three times a year.

A group of 20 UK travel agents, who spoke with the Observer yesterday at the Jamaica Product Exchange (JAPEX) at the Montego Bay Convention Centre, all admitted that it is now harder to convince their clients to book trips to the island as a result of the controversial tax.

“The APD has made it so much harder to sell the destination even though Jamaica has such a very good product,” said Mohamed Laghmouchi from Newmont Travel in London.

The agents said while the majority of their clients are impressed with Jamaica’s tourism product, they just cannot afford the increased taxes, especially for larger families.

“The tax is at least 20 per cent more than the airfare to come to the Caribbean,” said Laghmouchi.

“There are people who used to book for Jamaica three to four times a year, and now they book only once if at all,” he added.

Laghmouchi said his company participated in a campaign to push the UK Government to either abolish the APD or place the Caribbean in the same band as the United States, but to no avail.

The APD places countries in charging bands based on the distance of their capital cities from London. This means that flying from London to Los Angeles or Hawaii in the United States is calculated as being the same as to Washington, DC (Band B), while destinations in the Caribbean are charged at a higher rate of tax (in Band C).

As a result of the revisions made to the APD last year, economy-class passengers flying to the Caribbean face a tax of £75 (US$110) per ticket.

According to Laghmouchi, the APD problem is further compounded by the recession and the devaluation of the pound sterling.

“We are saying to the UK Government that we are already faced with all these things, which happened at once, and people just cannot afford anymore,” he said.

Kayleigh Bromley from Thomas Cook, one of the world’s oldest and largest travel companies, said many of the clients who would normally travel to Jamaica are now choosing destinations in Europe in order to bypass paying the tax.

“A lot of persons are opting instead to take the train to Paris and Brussels, anything to avoid paying the APD,” she told the Observer.

“The Caribbean hotels are cheaper, but the APD cost adds up, and so because the English already pay too much in taxes they are bypassing that one,” she added.

She noted, however, that there are some loyalists who will visit Jamaica regardless of the cost as they are unable to get this experience anywhere else.

“The Caribbean offers better value for their money than Europe because we have to tell them not to expect allinclusive in Europe to be the same as all-inclusive in the Caribbean,” she said.

Debbie Lees of Travel Counsellors in Manchester said the reduction of flights from north England coupled with the APD make Jamaica an even harder sell now.

She said the many charter flights, which used to operate out of that area to Jamaica, have stopped flying here.

That was confirmed last night by tourism officials who said that Tui Travel was the only charter from north England still coming to Jamaica.

Meanwhile, a study done by a London-based group which analysed traffic search patterns for the first six months of 2009, 2010 and 2011 for Barbados, Jamaica, Mexico and other long-haul destinations, said it found that there has been a 51 per cent drop in Caribbean destination searches.

“Clearly, with a respective 51.3 per cent and 25 per cent drop in traffic since the higher rate four band APD was brought in, Barbados and Jamaica have good reasons to expect the UK Government to remove the current anomalies in APD,” said John Barrington-Carver, head of Cheapflights Corporate Communications which undertook the study.

“High jet fuel prices have clearly increased fares, but have not prevented the 2010 post-recession global bounce in air passengers. It’s therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion,” he said.

Cheapflights said that the figures have to be viewed in the context of the post-recession recovery in global passenger numbers over the period, especially in 2010 when a postrecession ‘bounce’ occurred and passenger traffic increased by an above trend of 8.2 per cent.

Britain introduced the APD in 1994, and in 2009 it was changed to a much higher four-mileage band-based tax for economy seats and an even higher four-band tax for premium seats, including premium economy.

It was again increased last November, costing a family of four travelling economy to the Caribbean an APD of US$478. Regional tourism officials say that apart from affecting tourism-dependent economies like the Caribbean in general, the mileage bands also created unfair anomalies with APD being more expensive when flying to Jamaica than to Hawaii.