Youth can drive Tourism Industry

Marsha Armstrong, Programme Officer of the National Tourism Host Programme at the Barbados Tourism Product Authority (BTPA) believes that it is imperative that we teach our youth about Barbados, observing that a lot of young people have not experienced Barbados as a Tourism destination.

She was speaking to the media at the Barbados Tourism Youth Congress at Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre yesterday where she pointed out “The Barbados Tourism Youth Congress was formalised back in 2000 under the Ministry of Tourism to select our representative for the Caribbean Youth congress. The aim of the competition is to select the Junior minister for 2018 who will go to the State of the Industry Conference in October held in the Bahamas. There are nine secondary schools who responded to our call for the Junior Minister of Tourism 2018, but we invited every secondary school to enter the competition, but it is the Principal and the teachers that push their students to take advantage of this opportunity.”

According to her, “As coordinator for the competition for the past eleven years, I have truly found some great young people entering, Tourism is our Business and they too are aware of the importance of the industry to Barbados. Preparing for the competition we try to engage them about tourism, we give them a presentation about the sector, the career options. We supply the training and we have to expose them to the island because we have realised through the island tour young people don’t know the island.

“We believe that more needs to be done from primary school, every single child should know that Tourism is our number main foreign exchange earner, to some extent it is being taught within the Social Studies in Secondary School. However, the BTPA will be seeking to engage in a session with teachers and how they can incorporate Tourism in the syllabus. Every single Barbadian has to be involved in tourism thus the campaign “I am Tourism.”

Marsha Alleyne, Manager for Guest Experience, BTPA, “We had a fantastic season last year and what we aim to do is improve continually, instead of just having the ‘speak off’, we added the island tour for the children. We also had we had an interview with every single student. We want the person who represents the Junior Minister not only to speak well but to carry the responsibility for the nation representing the youth on Tourism.” (NB)