The Tourism Advisory Council has welcomed news that the Caribbean Tourism Organization is to up the stakes in tracking tourism’s economic impact across the region.
“Gathering data on any industry that is relevant and allows you to drill down into the details of what is happening in the industry is extremely important,” said Karie Bergstrom, chairman of the tourism body.
“We collect some data here, but it is not collected in such a way that makes it relatively easy to come up with what is the impact of tourism to the Cayman Islands.”
Director of Research and Information Technology Winfield Griffith said that the Caribbean Tourism Organization realised the importance of understanding the true picture.
“[There is a] critical need to broaden the base of tourism metrics available to accurately measure the economic contribution of the sector… To this end the organisation has been embarking on a series of initiatives. One such initiative has been the propagation of tourism satellite accounts that employ an internationally-accepted framework and approach to determine the direct value-added impact of tourism to the Caribbean.
“The intention is to establish a sustainable system for the production of these economic statistics, which are so important in the process of planning in the tourism sector,” he said.
Ms. Bergstrom noted that the council was fully behind the plans of the regional body and any moves to understand the sector better.
“The Tourism Advisory Council believes an important project that needs to happen [is] an overall economic tourism impact study of tourism in the Cayman Islands.”
Project funding
The project has been funded to the tune of $860,000, $400,000 of which is from the Inter-American Development Bank and the remainder from members and the organisation itself.
The funding will permit work initially in Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica. Steps will then be taken to expand on these initial efforts to incorporate as many organisation members as possible. Funding is being sought from other sources which will assist non-Development Bank members to come on board.
“You have got to look beyond number of visitors and establish the impact of their activity; their spending activity and volume and how that impacts, the ripple effects that has throughout the economy. The Tourism Satellite Accounts allow us to measure the direct impact. To the extent that we get the necessary assistance to put such a system in place we can expect the sustainability which is necessary… using scientific approaches.”
Co-ordination explained The project, said Mr. Griffith, will be co-ordinated by the organisation but supported by a regional co-ordinating committee made up of member governments both directly involved and those to be involved in the future. Institutions including Caricom, Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and Caribbean Development Bank are all on board, he said.
“The purpose is to set up a system that is internally consistent to allow us the possibility of evaluating and assessing the impact of tourism not just on individual countries but on a regional level.” Mariko Russell of the Inter-American Development Bank said that the grant had been given through their Regional Public Good window, which creates a platform framework for three or more countries to work together. She added that the bank believed that statistical development was very important for modernisation and the information should be used to formulate better policies.
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