The movers and shakers in the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) are grappling with the challenge of devising a new strategy for saving the economic lifeline of many regional economies.
Due to the catastrophic terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the CTO rescheduled its October conference, with an aim of repositioning the Caribbean as the premier destination of choice.
The 25 Annual Caribbean Tourism Conference is being held under the theme: “Reinventing Caribbean Tourism”, in the nation’s second city, Freeport, Grand Bahama at the Our Lucaya Resort.
That island is also hoping to pocket substantial revenue from hosting such a summit, which has attracted almost one thousand delegates to its shores.
“We were scheduled to come to this beautiful island, when the heinous acts of September 11 took place in Washington and New York and forced us, with much regret, to postpone our conference for an entire year,” said Gene Holder, Secretary-General of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation in his opening remarks.
“We however, remained committed to this country, to this hotel and to the purposes to which we were then wedded.”
Despite the extraordinary experiences over the past 12 months, Mr. Holder said tourism professionals however, were even more conscious that the events of September 11 and subsequent and related events have had a dramatic and negative impact on the world of travel and tourism.
“We say with conviction and without fear of contradiction, that the industry has never before faced the challenges that now confronts it,” he said.
According to Mr. Holder, the combination of poor global economic performance and a continuing sense of international insecurity, have conspired to create an environment completely inimical to travel and tourism and a high price has been paid in loss of profits, loss of jobs, loss of revenue, loss of service, inter alia by every business and every sub-sector of the industry.
Those who predict recovery in the near term and those who speak about the Caribbean leading the charge with rates of growth of seven percent, said Mr. Holder, can have no scientific basis for so doing, given the current lack of hard information on the external of global economic recovery and the continuing debate about peace and war.
A 29-year veteran in tourism, Mr. Holder said that his best advice to the conference was “cautious optimism”.
Mr. Holder noted that well before September 11, as the conference was being planned for October 2001, the theme: “re-invention of Caribbean Tourism”, because the product had become uncompetitive.
“Our voice in the marketplace somewhat dimmed, our service quality was being questioned the level of our profitability and new investment was low, our air access, particularly from Europe had diminished, and our institutions and systems needed modernisation,” he said. “Reinventing Caribbean Tourism is about putting all this right and now we have a regional strategic plan, which seeks to guide us as we take appropriate action. We need to use it. We need to finance its implementation.”
He said if Heads of Government were going to meet, then this was a worthy matter for these eminent persons. And, if they were going to discuss what putting things right was going to cost and why they should mortgage their future and “buck” any opposition to their plans to create a Sustainable Tourism Development Fund in order to finance a revolution in tourism development, then their time would be well spent.
After September 11 and turbulence it created, Mr. Holder told the conference that the task has become more urgent and the need to start the process more critical.
On the question of reinventing the Caribbean Tourism, he said firstly, the region needed to recognise that partnerships were now strategic rather than altruistic, and that the ethic was infusing every level of commercial and political relationship, whether local or international.
Secondly, for Caribbean Tourism to be transformed, change in the direction of meeting the kind of challenges presented by the future, must take place across the board, Mr. Holder said.
“We are all on the block and must earn our respect,” he warned. “We need to modernise our NTO’s and our national hotel and tourism associations, our regional public and private sector tourism organisations, our national and regional carriers, our infrastructural facilities at airports, seaports and inland, our hotel and amenities plant and above al else our human resources. We need to create new institutions, which enable us to have a greater degree of control over our destinies. All of this we need and much more.”
Added Mr. Holder: “We are operating in a topsy-turvy world in which everything is changing radically and simultaneously, including the consumer himself.”
He also noted that small airlines are putting large airlines out of business. Major tour operators are finding that massive consolidation does not necessarily hold the answers they seek.
Mr. Holder was also of the view that pumping large amounts of money into the marketplace have not always brought any increase in business while staying out of the market could prove equally disastrous.
In the face of all these uncertainties, he said that he was certain of one thing: that there has never been a greater need for all of to work together.
Where tourism touches the lives of Caribbean people so intimately and pervasively is concerned however, Mr. Holder said that the watch word must be “the public interest”, and protecting this was something which it would be totally irresponsible for governments leave to any other social partner.
By Lindsay Thompson, The Nassau Guardian
