BUSINESS MONDAY: LESC can be a tech hub, says Tourism Minister

Minister of Tourism Senator Lisa Cummins wants to see the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre (LESC) become a technological hub going forward.

Addressing those gathered for the 25th anniversary celebrations of the conference centre recently, she highlighted several lessons to be learnt due to the onset of the Covid pandemic, including the importance of disruptive technologies and the need to possess a willingness to retool and to revitalise strategy.

“It is my view that the LESC must become a technological hub, where we are seen as a new transformed conference tourism facility that allows the kind of meetings that all of us have been having over the last few months, where we have migrated away from our rooms, from our meeting rooms and offices into Zoom and online platforms. How can the LESC be transformed using technology? Every room in this facility should now be the top technological centre for conference services anywhere in this region. That is what I am looking to be able to see,” Cummins said.

She went further, highlighting the facility’s need to link with the island’s main industry, and posed several questions to be answered on further development of such.

“We are looking forward also with new possibilities for LESC to be connected with our tourism sector. We have ten meetings rooms and a capacity of 1 200. How do we get further? If Covid had not happened, we would have been in the final stage of preparation for UNCTAD. The new UNCTAD set-up will be very different than what was envisaged before Covid, but how does LESC provide a new disruptive force using technology and, in particular, the youth that have brought that technology to the fore to bring new value to the Barbados product when it is on display for the entire world,” she stated.

Cummins also insisted that in order to triumph, fast action is needed.

“We need to be pragmatic and be creative. We need to recover and to rebuild the sustainable tourism industry and we have the things required to do that,” the Senator stressed. (JMB)