SYMMONDS OPTIMISTIC

Minister of Tourism Kerrie Symmonds feels confident that despite the heavy blow dealt to tourism by the COVID-19 pandemic, it will continue to be the lead sector in the local economy for the foreseeable future, but he indicated that going forward steps will have to be taken to form stronger linkages with other sectors.

Symmonds, cognisant of the country’s heavy reliance on the tourism industry, spoke to the need for the industry to be strategically rebuilt, while putting the case for economic diversification to mitigate against an economic decline like that being experienced now. In that vein, the minister disclosed that he will, within a few days, be presenting a paper to Cabinet for the creation of a ministerial committee to focus on building out linkages between the critical sectors of the economy.

“...Virtually everything that makes money must be plugged into the lead sector, and the lead sector, if it is going to lead in a serious way, must now for the first time ever be walking hand in hand with the development of the other sectors in Barbados. It means that there has to be a coherence across the sectors with regards to policy and planning,” he said yesterday during a press conference.

His comments came as he said that it cannot be business as usual going forward and the tourism industry in this country post-COVID-19 has to be more competitive.

“Never again, if we can avoid it, should we find ourselves in a situation where we are so dependent on one particular sector, that an entire economy is virtually brought to its knees as a result of circumstances such as these, which are really beyond our control. A long period of our history and our evolution we were a monoculture society, whether it was agricultural dependency and then subsequently we became a tourism dependency,” he said.

“We want to be a post-COVID environment which is a more competitive Barbados, a more attractive Barbados destination, doing things and operating at standards which are better and more competitive and more exciting than we were before we went into this,” he said.

The tourism minister added, “Bear in mind that all of the world, without exception, has been brought to a halt and everyone who was a leader is now coming back to the starting gates to begin afresh... I think that this opportunity that presents itself during downtime, is an opportunity for us to look seriously at some of the key things that we have to do in order to maintain or build out
a more sustainable tourism product, a greener tourism product [and] to develop linkages across the sector.”

Minister Symmonds made the point while noting that emphasis also has to be placed on product development, looking at such things as accessibility for all people and the use of smart technology across the sector. He went further, indicating that the University of the West Indies will be assisting in the efforts to help the sector quantify what it earns, and to conduct research on what can be done to make the sector more competitive and sustainable. Symmonds indicated that they are in the process of carving out the framework of cooperation and hope to be in a position soon to start that work with university.
(JRT)