Anguilla News covers Anguilla and the wider
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Caribbean Tourism: A New
Era Or More Of The Same?
By Bevan Springer
NEW YORK (March 8, 2008) - Despite the serious
challenges facing the Caribbean's tourism industry, from new
passport regulations to a slowdown in the United States
economy, the Caribbean region can be cautiously optimistic
about its future as leaders begin to pay greater attention
to this, the Caribbean's basic industry.
Tourism, now acknowledged as the lifeblood of the region's
economy, has always played an important role in generating
precious foreign exchange revenues, and has become even more
essential with the marginalization of traditional staples
like sugar and bananas in an era of trade liberalization.
At the recent Caribbean Marketplace on Paradise Island in
the Bahamas, Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, the
new chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), made a
resounding call to protect, preserve, expand and improve
Caribbean tourism which now is expected to take a more
prominent role at Heads of Government meetings.
On the face of it, the intricacies of the industry are now
better understood, but is it just more rhetoric or is it
music to the ears of officials in the private sector, who
for years have bemoaned the apparent slighting of the
industry by the political directorate?
When CARICOM Heads of Government meet this Summer, the
agenda fixing meeting in the Bahamas this weekend at the
Heads' 19th Inter-Sessional Meeting envisaged a one-day
meeting on tourism. The intention is to make tourism a
permanent fixture at all CARICOM meetings and not just to
discuss it when the industry is in deep crisis.
The new priorities can be attributed not only to the
experience of Prime Minister Ingraham who recently returned
to power in the northern Caribbean nation, but to another
son of the Bahamas, Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, who is using
his rich experience of directing the Bahamian tourism
revival to help transform the region as the new Secretary
General of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO), a
regional organisation which represents Caribbean
governments.
Together with St. Lucia's Tourism Minister, Senator Allen
Chastanet, now CTO's chairman, they have been successful in
restructuring CTO's Board to have Ministers of Tourism meet
separately and apart from directors, thereby distinguishing
the crafting of regional policy from its implementation.
At least that's the intention of the restructuring and,
despite our Caribbean propensity to renege on regional
commitments when we localise our politics, we must hope our
tourism officials will stick to their guns and commit
resources to regional branding efforts as they meet their
national priorities.
"There is a heavy Government involvement in tourism
development, but Governments are not designed to be
innovative. Governments are designed to follow rules. In
fact, Governments make it very hard - if you don't follow
the rules, they will make sure they shut you down very
quickly," said Vanderpool-Wallace at the 11th full edition
of Counterpart International's Caribbean Media Exchange on
Sustainable Tourism (CMEx) last December in St. Lucia.
"The problem is that a lot of the people who are in the high
positions in Government are the people who followed the
rules in order to get there, so they require everybody else
to follow similar rules. So there is a systematic aversion
to changing things in Government, when we are talking about
being a great deal more innovative in doing some of these
things."
Given this reality, Vanderpool-Wallace, Senator Chastanet
and their colleagues in the public and private sector
deserve laurels for their creation of the Caribbean Tourism
Development Company (CTDC), a for-profit marketing and
business development unit owned equally by the CTO and CHA.
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Top on its agenda is a groundbreaking conference in
Washington, DC in June to focus on the economic future of
the Caribbean region.
"It's no secret that tourism is a pivotal industry for the
Caribbean," said Allen Chastanet, who shares the
chairmanship of CTDC with Barbadian Peter Odle, CHA's
president. "It's also no coincidence that we're holding the
summit in the national capital of our largest source of
business, the United States. This will be a time when all
investors, political and tourism influencers will be called
upon to help the Caribbean get on the path to realizing its
economic potential."
But will it be another talk shop or can CTDC in fact
transform the thinking of Caribbean people beyond the reefs
of our individual island homes?
Vanderpool-Wallace appears optimistic. "I have come to
understand through the years that no great story ever began
without the word 'despite'. Despite the forces that we see
in government, despite the forces that we see in our small
societies and despite the forces that we see our educational
systems, I see the beginnings of an age of enlightenment and
innovation emerging in Caribbean tourism."
In spite of today's challenges, tourism remains one of the
most resilient industries in the region and the world, and
it is especially important to the economies of small island
developing states. The industry in fact represents the
largest voluntary transfer of resources from the rich to the
not-so-rich in history.
British tourists for example, bring, and leave, more cash in
the Caribbean than the British government gives in
development assistance and aid.
With the vision articulated, will the Caribbean step up to
the wicket to take a greater market share in one of the
world's powerful industries? We can only guess, but we
should also hope.
