Prime Minister Perry Christie this morning told leaders of the Caribbean tourism industry that out of necessity, they must not only reinvent Caribbean tourism, but they must reinvent it rapidly.
Officially opening the 25th annual Caribbean Tourism Conference at the Our Lucaya Beach and Golf Resort, Mr. Christie made a strong pitch for more regional cooperation in all aspects of tourism promotion.
“Our first task is to create the Caribbean ,” Mr. Christie said. “Let me explain what I mean. The Caribbean has great currency outside our region but little currency within.”
Within the region, he said, especially in the sense of the Caribbean Tourist Organization (CTO), the Caribbean is only created at conferences.
“There is little contact between meetings, little collaboration outside of conferences and little exchange of ideas,” Mr. Christie told the more than 800 travel industry professionals from around the Caribbean who over the next four days will discuss issues pertinent to the industry at a time described as possibly the most challenging period facing the Caribbean tourism sector.
Under the theme “Reinventing Caribbean Tourism,” the delegates will be addressed by experts in virtually every field that impacts on tourism’s performance, as the industry continues to struggle to recover from the effects of the devastating terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001 .
Mr. Christie told the delegates that if the “definition of madness is doing the same things over and over again while expecting a different result, then we are mad in this region.”
“Mistakes made by The Bahamas are repeated in Jamaica , in Aruba and throughout the region,” the Prime Minister said, adding that these mistakes could be avoided through more collaboration.
Noting that no two countries pay the same prices for advertising spaces in magazines and newspapers and for radio and television spots, Mr. Christie added, “We do not collaborate enough in our region on those business issues that will save our treasuries much cost and make our efforts much more effective and efficient.”
By comparison, the Prime Minister said that even though Carnival Cruise Lines competes with Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises, each month and “nearly every day they are spontaneously cooperating and coordinating their efforts” through the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA).
“While we debate and rant and rave about what the cruise lines are and are not doing, they are busy deciding how to extract the maximum from the Caribbean for their shareholders and at the lowest possible cost,” Mr. Christie told conference delegates.
He said the FCCA knows that the more people to whom they “can deliver a quality cruise product at an attractive price, the more people they will interest in taking a cruise.”
“I am confident that the more people to whom we can deliver a quality Caribbean vacation, the more people I can interest in a Bahamas vacation and the more we benefit individually and collectively,” Mr. Christie said. “When we demonstrate of belief in this principle on a daily basis, we will have invented the idea of the Caribbean within the Caribbean region.”
But he stressed that there can be “be no reinvention of Caribbean tourism without our commitment and daily intent manifestly to cooperate.”
“I am not speaking about giving away national trade secrets such as there may be in tourism,” the Prime Minister said. “I am speaking about eliminating waste and wasteful pursuits. We have a wealth of knowledge of tourism in our region. We need to share that knowledge to our maximum benefit.”
Mr. Christie also suggested that the reinvention of Caribbean tourism “calls for a reinvention of our understanding of our product.”
“The product is everything in between the time that our visitors contact our tourist office to the time that they board the national or regional carrier to the time that they land back home,” Mr. Christie said. “And if we are not improving our entire product at every point along the line, if we are not ensuring that the experience is better at every possible encounter, we fail to improve the product.”
Participants in the conference include Ministers of Tourism; Directors of Tourism; various other tourism officials; representatives of airlines, hotels, travel and international press, advertising agencies, glossy magazines, travel agents; and a wide range or suppliers to the industry.
The conference was initially scheduled to be held here in October 2001, but was postponed because of the tragic events of September 11.
By Oswald Brown, The Bahama Journal
