The Barbados Government, together with the island’s Sports Authorities and Sporting Federations, are committed to developing an effective strategy to leverage sports to attract more visitors as a catalyst for economic growth, community development, and to enhance Barbados’ global profile.
Barbados has long been celebrated for its breathtaking natural beauty, vibrant culture, and warm hospitality, but the island’s authorities now recognize that the time has come to diversify the island’s tourism offerings and exploit more effectively the tremendous potential which sports tourism represents.
Surfing is one such sport that offers tremendous potential to boost the island’s tourism. With its tropical climate, warm, crystalline waters, offshore winds, and reef breaks, Barbados has become a world mecca for surfing. From the powerful, hollow waves at Soup Bowl on the East to the long, mellow lefthanders at Freights Bay in the South, the island offers the perfect surfing experience for surfers of all levels and ideal conditions to host world-class surf competitions. This is why many visitors choose Barbados over the other Caribbean islands and why surfing, which is already making a meaningful contribution to Sports Tourism, has the potential to have a much greater impact.
The key to leveraging this potential is investing in major international surf contests. The island has already reaped the benefits of hosting the World Surf League’s largest surf event in the Caribbean region, the WSL 5000 Barbados Surf Pro and Live Like Zander Junior Pro, put on by Surf Promotions Barbados Ltd., which attracts over 450 surfers to the iconic Soup Bowl in March. These surfers are accompanied by their coaches, family, and friends who, along with the event’s officials, media, and surf fans, spend 5-7 nights on the island, renting cars, staying in hotels, beach houses, and Airbnbs, dining in restaurants, shopping in supermarkets, and enjoying the many attractions the island has to offer.
Based on the success of this event, Barbados can now aspire to hosting even bigger events, like the International Surfing Association’s World Surfing Games, which attracts participants from every corner of the globe, is webcast to thousands of surf fans around the world, and offers the opportunity to attract hundreds of potential visitors to the island through effective promotion of the island’s natural beauty, exciting nightlife, and world-class attractions.
As we boost the island’s Sports Tourism product by hosting major international surf events, we also contribute to the development of our surfers. Indeed, this small island, although lacking in coaches and resources, has produced two of the region’s leading surfers in Chelsea Tuach and Joshua Burke.
Chelsea is the first and only Caribbean surfer to have been crowned the World Surf League’s North American Junior Women’s Champion, and she did so twice, in 2013 and again in 2015. She also achieved the Caribbean’s highest ever world ranking when, at 19 years of age, she ended fourth on the WSL’s International World Rankings, becoming the first and is still the only Caribbean surfer to have qualified for the WSL World Championship Tour, an elite tour open to the world’s top 17 female and top 36 male surfers. These surfers traditionally come from powerhouse surf nations with thousands of surfers, like the United States, Australia, Hawaii, and Brazil, making Barbados the smallest nation to ever be represented on the Tour. Chelsea has also won seven medals for Barbados, including surfing’s first and only Gold medal, which she won in El Salvador at last year’s edition of the CAC Games.
Then there is Joshua Burke, arguably Barbados’ best ever male surfer. He is the only other surfer to have won a medal in Shortboard surfing, having captured silver with Chelsea at the inaugural CAC (Central America and the Caribbean) Beach Games held in Colombia in 2022. He ended the WSL 2023/2024 North American Season ranked 5th and is currently competing on the WSL Challenger Series in a bid to become the Caribbean’s first male surfer to qualify for the World Championship Tour.
Other top surfers who have made their mark on the international stage in recent years are Ché Allan (the only surfer other than Chelsea Tuach and Joshua Burke to have topped the podium in a WSL event) and Chelsea Roett (who has won some major regional events like the APSPR Corona Pro in Puerto Rico and the ECSC (East Coast Surfing Championships) Women’s Pro event in Virginia Beach). More recently, Tommaso Layson has been making a big splash, dominating his divisions locally, and in August this year, he defended the title he won last year in Virginia Beach in the Junior Division and was also crowned as the ECSC Male Shortboard Champion.
Inspired by their successes, Barbados now has a new generation of talented surfers, which augurs well for the future of surfing in Barbados with the possibility for more medals and more exposure for the island on the international stage.
Surfing has already made a huge contribution to the development of sports tourism and will continue to set Barbados apart as a premier destination for surf enthusiasts and surf professionals from around the world, especially as it gains greater exposure through the hosting of major international surf events.
Barbados Surfing Association - barbadossurfingassociation@gmail.com
Ministry of Tourism and International Transport - ps@tourism.gov.bb
International Surfing Association - www.isasurf.org