The As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States re­cent­ly held a meet­ing with lo­cal tourism stake­hold­ers co-op­er­a­tion on sus­tain­able tourism de­vel­op­ment.Julio Oroz­co, di­rec­tor of Sus­tain­able Tourism of the ACS, re­in­forced the im­por­tance of co­op­er­a­tion ac­tiv­i­ties and the shar­ing of achieve­ments ito strength­en the coun­tries of the Greater Caribbean.

The work pro­grammes of tourism au­thor­i­ties–the Min­istry of Tourism, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (TDC)–were pre­sent­ed with the aim of iden­ti­fy­ing cross-cut­ting ar­eas for co-op­er­a­tion.Don­na Fer­raz, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Tourism, who rep­re­sent­ed Min­is­ter Ger­ald Hadeed at the meet­ing, said the min­is­ter and his staff recog­nise the im­por­tance of the dis­cus­sions, and by ex­ten­sion, the di­a­logue on sus­tain­able tourism.

Oroz­co and Aman­da Charles, sus­tain­able tourism ad­vis­er of the ACS, em­pha­sized the pri­or­i­ty of the Sus­tain­able Tourism Zone of the Caribbean (STZC), the first of its kind in the re­gion. The STZC in­cor­po­rates the prin­ci­ples of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment in in­te­grat­ed tourism plan­ning and of­fers a unique tool to co-or­di­nate re­gion­al ef­forts in tourism de­vel­op­ment.

Se­lec­tion of T&T's STZC des­ti­na­tions will be pri­or­i­tized. A num­ber of ac­tiv­i­ties were iden­ti­fied for joint im­ple­men­ta­tion and it was agreed that a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the ACS and na­tion­al tourism agen­cies will be ap­point­ed to work to­wards for­mal­i­sa­tion of these pro­pos­als.