This is the third year where we have expanded our survey beyond only banks to also include non-bank capital providers such as equity and mezzanine investors. It is becoming increasingly clear that “non-banks”provide a different perspective to the financing issue and they are proving to be a very welcome addition to our survey.

We are delighted to present KPMG’s 12th annual Caribbean Hospitality Financing Survey, highlighting financing trends in the region’s hospitality and tourism industry and the outlook for the future of the industry.

Non-banks are consistently more confident than banks about the prospects for Caribbean tourism over the next 12 months registering an average of 7.56 out of 10 in terms of their level of confidence versus 6.67 out of 10 for banks. They are also more willing than banks to contemplate a lending opportunity in the Caribbean with 13% of non-banks expressing a very strong willingness to lend in the Caribbean whilst no banks expressed the same opinion. However, 13%of the non-banks indicated they had zero interest in lending in the region with none of the banks falling into this category. As expected most respondents’ opinions fell within these two extremes but the general mix of responses for non-banks indicated a greater willingness to lend than banks, as can be seen on page 5 of this report.