Barbados Wants You to Go There to Work Remotely for a Year

Barbados is the latest Caribbean island planning to reopen to international tourists, welcoming back visitors starting from July 12. But there will be safety measures in place and testing requirements.

Travelers to the island must take precautions when visiting Barbados. Within 72 hours before departing, travelers from high-risk countries (which currently include the U.S.) are “strongly encouraged” to take a COVID-19 test. Travelers from countries with fewer than 100 new cases in the last seven days can take their test within one week prior to departure. Visitors who have not taken a COVID-19 test before departure will be required to take on upon arrival and will be quarantined at their own expense until the results come through which is approximately 48 hours.

These rules are necessary to keep the island safe, but also are a burden for people who want to hop on a plane and just visit the amazing beaches of Barbados. So the local government is launching a promotion, inviting people who can work remotely, to just stay in Barbados for up to a year.

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley is expected to introduce a 12-month Barbados Welcome Stamp to allow visitors the option to work remotely from Barbados for a year at a time. The Prime Minister said one of the things the pandemic has shown is that it made short-term travel more difficult because of the testing and the requirements for rapid testing, which were not reliably available.

“You don’t need to work in Europe, or the US or Latin America if you can come here and work for a couple months at a time; go back and come back. But in order for those things to truly resonate, what does it mean?   It means that what we offer has to be world-class and what we continue to offer is world-class,” Ms. Mottley underlined.