Kingston (TAN): Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves is calling on regional authorities to come together and tackle pressing issues concerning tourism in the Caribbean.
At the two-day conference on the theme Keeping the Right Balance – Tourism Development in an Era of Diversification, the PM also sought help to develop the tourism industry in the region.
“I need your help. I need your help very much in continuing. Those of you from overseas – from international and the rest of the region, and certainly our own people,” Barbados Today quoted him as saying on Wednesday.
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He said St Vincent and the Grenadines was new to the tourism business and would be developing a sustainable product that would be “welcoming to everyone” but must benefit small businesses and communities to help reduce poverty and create jobs, according to the report.
“We want you to help us (St Vincent and the Grenadines) in avoiding some of those errors and help us too, to enlarge our strength and possibilities and reduce as far as humanly possible our weakness and limitations, even to assist us in causing those weaknesses to metamorphose into strength and for our limitations to be altered into possibilities,” he said.
Gonsalves said construction of the international airport had already started to make a big difference in visitor arrival numbers. Stating that regional economies did not have all the answers or resources on their own, Gonsalves said there were several issues that needed a united effort to address including climate change, resource scarcity, ageing societies, inequality, an increase in the use of artificial intelligence and “unilateralists”.
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Welcoming delegates to the first-of-its-kind conference in St Vincent, the acting secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organization Neil Walters said: “We hope that at the end of this period, the discussions will lead to actions and collaborations which will in turn assist with the reshaping of this industry we rely on for the sustainability of our regional economies.”
Sustainability was now an industry buzz word, Walters said in his recorded speech, adding that the region had a number of unique characteristics that should be sustained. But he said: “The development of tourism in the Caribbean has at times not been in sync with the environment in which this growth has occurred.”
