ROSEAU, Dominica (CMC):

The Dominica Hotel and Tourism Association (DHTA) on Wednesday welcomed the an-nouncement of a new jet service, providing much-needed airlift into the country.

"We are really glad to hear that because air access is certainly one of the biggest problems that we have in the tourism sector. We are obviously happy to see an increase of airlift coming into Do-minica," said DHTA President Simon Walsh.

Countries involved

Regional Jet Express says it will commence service to the island on October 18 as part of its daily opera-tions to five Caribbean countries.

Apart from Dominica, the other countries to benefit from the new service are Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.

Dominica has complained in the past of poor airlift and the Roosevelt Skerrit administration said it was exploring various avenues to improve the situation.

Last month, the government said it might consider providing subsidies to foreign airlines and that it had also established a team of technical professionals to help formulate strategies for improving air access to the island.

Tourism Minister Ian Douglas said that the government is "in discussion with no less than about five or six different serious initiatives from airlines to ferries" and there was also the possi-bility of providing subsidies to airlines to improve services to the island.

Guarantee clause

"Guarantees mean actually paying the airlines for empty seats because al-most every offer that we receive has a guarantee clause," he said.

Douglas said that air access into Dominica is the single biggest factor affecting the growth of the tourism sector and the island's economy.

During the recent budget debate here, a senior government minister had expressed disappoint-ment with the service provided by the regional airline, LIAT.

Regional Jet Express will add Cuba and Haiti to its list of destinations soon.