BARBADOS AND ITS REGIONAL NEIGHBOURS need to do more to illustrate the importance of tourism to their economies.
And learning from a leading destination such as Singapore is a good place to start, said Minister of Tourism Richard Sealy.
Sealy was speaking recently in his capacity as Caribbean Tourism Organisation chairman during a forum on the Singapore tourism model, at which Singapore expert Christopher Khoo showed how the region could benefit from adopting some of the things his country did successfully.
While noting that there were significant differences between the region and Singapore, including it’s system of government, Sealy said there were still lessons the Caribbean could learn, including enhancing service delivery.
“We all know that if there is one thing that Singapore…is very strong on is the question of service. And so we look forward to exploring new ways of benefitting from what Singapore has gone through that we can position ourselves as the most desirable year-round warm weather destination,” he said.
“Of course I think when we reflect on the Singapore experience, we should keep a couple of things in mind. Critics often say, when we talk about the Singapore model, [that] when you bring along the Singapore model bring along the dictator as well because Singapore’s democracy is managed, let’s put it that way.
“Things that we have to deal with as public officials here you don’t necessarily have to deal with that in Singapore, they tend to do things a little differently there and that might be true, but I don’t accept that that there is nothing that we can learn about it,” he added.
Sealy said this was important considering that while tourism was not Singapore’s most important economic sector it was for many Caribbean islands including Barbados.
“With the exception of Guyana and Trinidad, I think [for] almost all of our CTO members tourism is basically the main activity and certainly in terms of percentage to GDP probably stands at number one, possibly at number two in a few cases. But we really don’t have much else to speak of,” he noted.
“So much of what we are learning from the Singapore experience, much of the success that [they] would have had over the years…has been done in an environment where they had alternatives we don’t have and so I sincerely hope that we could keep that in mind and allow that to inform us as we move on.” (SC)