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The Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) recently presented a virtual session entitled “The COVID Lessons”.

Explore domestic, intra-regional tourism on a wider scale

The time may have come for Tourism Ministers from various Caribbean countries to explore on a wider scale the whole concept of having more intra-regional visitors in an effort to help regional economies during the current COVID-19 pandemic and domestic tourism must get some attention as well.

 

The suggestion came as the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) presented a virtual session entitled “The COVID Lessons”, which featured tourism ministers from across the region, who discussed a matter of pandemic-related matters and what they have learnt from COVID.

Present were Dominica’s Tourism Minister, Denise Charles; Minister of Tourism for St. Kitts and Nevis, Lindsay Grant; Tourism Minister for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Carlos James and Minister of Tourism for Anguilla, Haydn Hughes. Barbados’ Minister of Tourism, Senator Lisa Cummins who was scheduled to be a part of the panel was not able to participate, as moderator Johnson Johnrose indicated that she had to attend an urgent meeting.

 

After Dominica’s Tourism Minister Denise Charles revealed that that regional island put together a number of staycation packages to offer its citizens more “domestic tourism” as visitor arrivals heavily declined during 2020 on account of the pandemic, the focus of the panel discussion turned to relying on locals in various countries to help sustain the tourism sector and also having citizens of various Caribbean countries explore the offerings of other regional countries, as a means of keeping the islands' tourism sectors viable.

 

St. Vincent’s Tourism Minister Carlos James stated, “We have about 43 million people within the Caribbean and we have to obviously focus a lot more on domestic tourism, intra-regional tourism, the movement of people within the region. It’s important.”

 

“When we look at international countries, our target markets are from North America, Europe and the United Kingdom and Canada. But right now, persons from the region cannot go into Canada. They have closed their borders. Similar protocols are coming for the UK and parts of Europe and it clearly means that if we are to look at a sustainable tourism industry, we have to focus a lot more on domestic travel, movement intra-regionally, we have to focus on even staycations, a point made by my colleague from Dominica,” Minister James asserted.

 

Minister James stressed the need to patronise the services of people in the hotel industry such as taxi operators, bartenders, restaurateurs and hoteliers, given that these are the persons “feeling the pinch” at present, given the decline of the tourism sector. This is key he said, given that many in tourism have overlooked those in the domestic market and even across the region, as being important to the sector and have instead focused heavily on international markets.

 

Anguilla’s Tourism Minister Hadyn Hughes meanwhile said, “We’ve been talking about intra-regional travel for a very long time and we don’t look at us as tourists. If I travel to Dominica, they don’t view me as a tourist and that is something that we have to get past. A tourist doesn't necessarily have to come from North America or Europe.”

 

He meanwhile suggested that a barrier to more intra-regional travel however may be the cost of airfare and airlift in general into the respective islands, a point with which St. Kitts Tourism Minister Lindsay Grant agreed, stressing that countries may need to reduce taxes and fees, to have more travel in this area. (RSM)

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