The Caribbean Tourism Organisation is holding its 26th annual conference this week in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The conference will feature three days of intense discussions on some of region hottest tourism issues ﾗ including controversial proposals to tax cruise ships calling at Caribbean ports. The region accounts for half of the world’s cruise market.
The good news is that there seems to be something of an upturn in regional tourism. The CTO’s latest statistics indicate that stop-over arrivals to the region increased by 3 per cent in May, 6 per cent in June and 6 per cent in July, compared to the corresponding months in 2002. Overall, tourist arrivals for the summer were better than last year by an estimated 5 per cent.
The bad news is a searing fight over the organisation’s leadership, with Barbadian Jean Holder, the CTO’s veteran secretary-general, accused of being “opposed to progress through cooperation”. Mr Holder is being defended by Bahamas Minister of Tourism Obie Wilchcombe, who is the conference chairman.
Professor Rex Nettleford, vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies, delivered the keynote address on Thursday. He asked how the Caribbean Single Market and Economy would impact on tourism, the region’s pivotal industry.
“A common single market economy must mean the economics of inclusion of all in as regional an enterprise as tourism. But can it? There is admittedly a logical priority that must be given to the national tourist industry if such inclusiveness is to work on the regional level ﾖ a task which the CTO has been attempting for all of its years to achieve.
“We in this region know how not to make things work; and add to this a certain competitiveness which instead of being friendly rivalry becomes not infrequently friendly fire and we get an idea of the difficulty,” he said.
But he neverthless urged the industry to reposition itself for a globalised world, arguing that “we had all better hang together or be hanged separately.”
Editorial, The Nassau Guardian
