Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

Mon­tego Bay

Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion, Tashia Bur­ris, said the long-term eco­nom­ic im­pact of the oil spill on To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor and its econ­o­my is yet to be de­ter­mined as the is­land is still in the process of deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion.

Bur­ris was among at­ten­dees at the Glob­al Tourism Re­silience Day Con­fer­ence 2024 which took place in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica on Fri­day.

“Right now, fund­ing is a crit­i­cal chal­lenge. Fund­ing for dis­as­ters is re­al­ly more of a con­tin­gency ap­proach rather than a cer­tain­ty ap­proach and that has to change.

“It is not a mat­ter of if dis­as­ters will hap­pen but when and when these dis­as­ters hap­pen, we must be able to re­spond quick­ly, and not just quick­ly but mar­shalling hu­man and tech­ni­cal re­sources,” she said.

Speak­ing to Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Bur­ris not­ed that there has been a lot of mis­in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic space due to in­ac­cu­rate re­ports by “reg­u­lar cit­i­zens,” go­ing out via so­cial me­dia plat­forms about the ex­tent of the spill’s ef­fects along the im­pact­ed coast­line. ‘It has been a chal­lenge to de­bunk these re­ports be­cause of the sheer reach of so­cial me­dia. I im­plore per­sons to seek re­put­ed sources for the news as this mis­in­for­ma­tion has the po­ten­tial to do even more dam­age to our tourism prod­uct if left un­man­aged.

“Re­spon­si­ble re­port­ing will aid our cause great­ly. Our fo­cus at this time is to deal with the im­me­di­ate threat suc­cess­ful­ly and man­age all the steps to re­cov­er in the short­est pos­si­ble time­frame,” Bur­ris added.

Dis­as­ter fund­ing

At the con­fer­ence, Bur­ris called for more fi­nanc­ing for the is­land, es­pe­cial­ly for dis­as­ters, which can have a neg­a­tive im­pact on tourism.

She ex­plained that fund­ing for dis­as­ters ought to be fac­tored in­to the is­land’s, and even the coun­try’s, bud­get­ing process.

“We re­alise that the fund­ing for dis­as­ter man­age­ment re­al­ly stems from the ac­tu­al dis­as­ter and then you have to ac­tu­al­ly re­cov­er from the dis­as­ter and then get to the place where you can ac­tu­al­ly thrive again and that will span a num­ber of pe­ri­ods whether it be a num­ber of fis­cal years....we have to en­sure there is al­ways an el­e­ment of fund­ing that is set aside for when things hap­pen that we do not nec­es­sar­i­ly plan for,” Bur­ris ad­vised.

Mean­while, Ja­maica’s Tourism Min­is­ter Ed­mund Bartlett, who was one of the key speak­ers at the con­fer­ence, said every op­por­tu­ni­ty must be used to track dis­rup­tions, man­age the process when they ar­rive and re­cov­er not just in re­al time but in nano time to en­sure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the re­gion

He al­so not­ed the im­por­tance of the Glob­al Tourism Re­silience and Cri­sis Man­age­ment Cen­tre (GTR­CMC) which was es­tab­lished in No­vem­ber 2019 in re­sponse to the need to man­age cri­sis in the tourism in­dus­try.

The Glob­al Tourism Re­silience an­nu­al con­fer­ence is an event that is used to sup­port and for­malise the glob­al dis­cus­sions and ac­tions that must be tak­en to pre­serve and safe­guard the in­dus­try.

This years’ stag­ing of the con­fer­ence takes place over a two day pe­ri­od and in­cludes pan­el dis­cus­sions, net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, pre­sen­ta­tions, and de­bates on mat­ters of build­ing re­silience in tourism.

These ex­perts in their col­lec­tive fields will col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly dis­cuss is­sues that are cen­tral to fu­ture-proof­ing trav­el and tourism from var­i­ous dis­rup­tions.

The con­fer­ence, which was host­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with UN Tourism (for­mer­ly the Unit­ed Na­tions World Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion, UNWTO) and the Glob­al Tourism Re­silience and Cri­sis Man­age­ment Cen­tre (GTR­CMC), al­so aligns with the first an­niver­sary of the Unit­ed Na­tions’ of­fi­cial de­c­la­ra­tion of yes­ter­day, Feb­ru­ary 17, as Glob­al Tourism Re­silience Day an­nu­al­ly.

The con­fer­ence host­ed the in­au­gur­al Glob­al Tourism Re­silience Awards yes­ter­day, ho­n­our­ing the top five tourism lead­ers across the Caribbean who demon­strat­ed re­silience through­out the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.