KINGSTON, Ja­maica: Air­lines that change their rules, own­er­ship struc­tures and busi­ness arrange­ments at will pose a dan­ger to the on­go­ing vi­a­bil­i­ty of the Caribbean tourism prod­uct. This was the mes­sage sent by Ja­maica's Tourism Min­is­ter, Ed­mund Bartlett, as he ad­dressed the Unit­ed Na­tions World Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (UNWTO) 19th Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in Gyeongju, South Ko­rea, last week. In his ad­dress, Bartlett called for ur­gent ac­tion on the part of stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the UNWTO, to ad­dress press­ing con­cerns re­gard­ing air­lift fac­ing Caribbean coun­tries. He lament­ed that "coun­tries in the re­gion that de­pend so heav­i­ly on tourism are be­ing faced with tremen­dous chal­lenges in main­tain­ing air­lift to the re­gion as there is no air­lift op­er­a­tion pol­i­cy frame­work glob­al­ly and, there­fore, there are no rules to fol­low."

The min­is­ter charged that coun­tries in the re­gion were be­ing asked to ac­com­mo­date air­lines that op­er­ate with­in their own rules. "The truth is," he said, "air­lines are free to change their rules, own­er­ship struc­tures and busi­ness arrange­ments at will, ir­re­spec­tive of how they af­fect the cost of trav­el or the avail­abil­i­ty of con­nec­tiv­i­ty to vul­ner­a­ble tourism states like ours in the Caribbean, and oth­er small is­land des­ti­na­tions. The trend of cre­at­ing oli­gop­oly will re­duce con­sumer choic­es and cre­ate pric­ing lev­els that are un­af­ford­able to a large num­ber of po­ten­tial trav­el­ers and tourists."

Op­po­si­tion to hik­ing APD

Bartlett al­so used the in­ter­na­tion­al plat­form to call on all tourism in­ter­ests in the Caribbean to join in the de­bate re­gard­ing the re­ver­sal or ad­just­ment be­ing sought in the ap­pli­ca­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial air pas­sen­ger du­ty (APD) on trav­ellers from the Unit­ed King­dom to the re­gion. He said the de­bate should con­tin­ue, giv­en the fact that the UK gov­ern­ment was fac­ing grow­ing op­po­si­tion even with­in its own par­lia­ment over plans to in­crease the rate of APD.

The APD was in­tro­duced by the British Gov­ern­ment in 1994. Since then, there have been in­creas­es in 2009 and in 2010. In il­lus­trat­ing the ef­fect the ADP has on air trav­el to the Caribbean, Bartlett said: "The im­ple­men­ta­tion and ap­pli­ca­tion of the tax has grave im­pli­ca­tions for our in­dus­try. For ex­am­ple, where­as in the past, it was much cheap­er for a fam­i­ly to trav­el, to­day, it will cost a fam­i­ly of four trav­el­ling econ­o­my class to the Caribbean an ad­di­tion­al US$478."

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