IT CANNOT BE business as usual for Barbados and its Caribbean neighbours that depend heavily on tourism for their economic well-being.
This is so given the increased competition these islands have faced and are expected to have to confront in the future. In this connection, there is a view that sun, sea and sand will no longer be enough to keep the tourists coming in large numbers.
It is a view that has not gone unnoticed by Barbadian officials, led by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart.
Speaking in April during a regular reception for repeat visitors, Stuart said Barbados was committed to diversifying tourism product offerings to attract more people. “There are many visitors to our shores and potential visitors to our shores who are especially interested in matters relating to heritage and preservation and that is an area of our tourism sector which we are committed to developing,” he told the gathering.
“It is important to diversify our product offerings to appeal to a wider range of visitors and to attract additional people here.”
The reception at which the Prime Minister spoke was one at which Barbados saluted several visitors who have vacation here for several years. Barbados is said to have a large number of repeat visitors and these visitors, as well as a newer and younger set, would be keen for more product offerings.
In October last year, Barbados Tourism Product Authority chief executive officer Dr Kerry Hall said her agency was undertaking an audit of traditional and non-traditional tourism offerings as part of a plan to diversify the product and spread it to rural communities.
This audit would involve an assessment of existing tourism products by volume, distribution, quality, district and parish.
In terms of a regional perspective, Caribbean Tourism Organisation Secretary General Hugh Riley said the emergence and growth of destinations like Abu Dhabi and Dubai meant the region could not afford to become complacent.
“We expect more countries to get into the tourism business and some countries are relatively new to the business. But we have been in it for a long time and we have to keep on by freshening our product and listening to the responses of our customers,” he said.
“We have to make sure that we’re not just satisfying but exceeding their expectations and we want to make sure that they not only come back but that they also recommend the Caribbean to others. We are constantly aware of what the competition is doing but building a man-made beach somewhere and sticking up plastic palms really doesn’t compare to the authenticity of the Caribbean.
“Somebody’s always going to have a bigger Olympic size pool or a taller waterfall and we expect that. But no one should have a more special experience than they would get in the Caribbean because we are the most tourism dependent region in the world.”
The United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, in a previous study, said “although tourism has been a major economic sector in the Caribbean since the mid-1960s, the sector now faces significant challenges as competition intensifies in the global tourism market”.
“These challenges include environmental impacts, and the need for continued high levels of public investment in order to sustain the tourism product,” it stated.
“The precariousness of the sector was made starkly evident with the onset of the global recession in 2009, when the sector recorded significant decline.
“Notwithstanding some limited recovery since that time, the recent experience highlighted the need for Caribbean countries to undertake more vigorous efforts towards diversifying their economies in general, and enhancing their tourism sectors in particular.”
There was another aspect of diversification that Barbados and its neighbours should pay attention to, said the International Monetary Fund in a working paper titled Revisiting Tourism Flows To The Caribbean: What Is Driving Arrivals?
Outside of modernising and increasing the types of products offered, the report said finding new source markets was also important.
“Since the demand for tourism in the Caribbean is sensitive to shocks in key source countries, governments may wish to place more emphasis on policies that help diversify source markets, and especially to countries with higher growth rates, such as large emerging markets in Latin America,” the IMF paper stated.
