WE NEED AN EDUCATION REVOLUTION in the Caribbean in order to transform the regional tourism industry and make it more sustainable.
This call came from Sir Hilary Beckles, principal of the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus (UWI) as he delivered opening remarks during the start of the sixth Tourism Human Resource Conference at the UWI medical faculty on Wednesday.
“The lowest recovery in this hemisphere coming out of the recession is the English-speaking Caribbean . . . . We in the English speaking subsector have the most sluggish response because we have the lowest enrolment in education, because we have the lowest enrolment in tertiary exposure and therein lies our predicament,” he said.
“And our tourism sector is being affected by all of this. This is a drag on our tourism sector; the educational issue. So we speak of the need for an education revolution. We absolutely need it,” said Sir Hilary.
Stating that statistics suggested there will be approximately 1.5 billion people travelling in the category of tourist by 2020, Beckles said the Caribbean was just “a small part of that global movement” and therefore suggested that leaders in the industry capitalize on the opportunities as they arise.
Sir Hilary, who has touted a policy of at least one university graduate per household in Barbados said the region needed more tertiary educated people to tackle some of the challenges within the tourism sector.
The educator identified high input cost, tightening credit line, low productivity and low innovation levels as four of the main challenges affecting the sector. He said it was in need of innovation through education.
He said the region needed “a futuristic, high-touch and sensitive” model of human resource management. This, he said, was an evolutionary model. He added that he did not believe there was a shortage of capital in the Caribbean but a “shortage of imaginative proposals with creative options to attract that capital”.
“Whichever model of economic development you chose to use it will say one thing; the potential of a country for economic development is an expression of the number of people in that society who have or are having higher education,” he said.
The theme of the conference which runs until today is Enhancing Caribbean Tourism Human Resource Through Partnerships And Innovation. (MM)
