Unlocking the potential of 40 million intra-Caribbean travellers is at the forefront of tourism’s mind, but it will take forward-thinkinig leaders to drive it.
“We need to find four or five visionary prime ministers who will agree what needs to be done, how to do it and where investment needs to go,” said David Scowsill, President and CEO of World Travel and Tourism Council. “They will drag people with them. If they do not push the boat out and lead it will never happen … the majority of world travel is domestic and that does not happen in the Caribbean. Low-cost airlines stimulated it [in Europe] but that does not exist right now [in the Caribbean region]. If the governments could unite around this one idea of freedom to travel then a whole bunch of other things would come out of it.”
Mr. Scowsill was speaking at a specially convened Caribbean Tourism Organisation forum chaired by Vincent-Vanderpool Wallace, Minister of Tourism and Aviation for the Bahamas. The latter said many connections to and from various Caribbean destinations were through Miami, which was something to be ashamed of.
Private-public
The seminar was entitled Successful Strategies for Public/Private Partnerships and also featured Nigel Mayes of Routes, an organisation that specialises in aviation route development. He said the most important aspects of a private-public partnership were common goals, shared strategy and targets, equality and longevity of partnerships and a joint approach to airlines and tour operators. In terms of air service development, that is, building new routes or possible routes, there was a ‘golden triangle’ which involved airlines, airports and tourism authorities, all of whom were interested in profit, increasing passengers and tourism. He said the economic impact could be vast and the most important customer may be the airline, so business to business marketing to airlines was the most efficient element of an air service development plan. He warned, however, that partnerships were difficult as the industry often operated in ‘silos’ which were independent of each other.
Mr. Scowsill observed that global data indicated that tourism accounted for 9 per cent of GDP, contributed US$6 trillion and created 260 million jobs, or one in every 12 worldwide. This was expected to increase to 9.6 per cent of GDP, $9 trillion and 320 million, or one in every 12 worldwide, by 2021. This placed tourism above the automobile and just below the banking industries, he observed, but while these industries were liable to be bailed out, tourism was not. Thus, it was important to get across the fact that the industry was to be taken seriously.
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