An­drea Perez-Sobers

For four years, the in­sti­tu­tion charged with over­see­ing the re­gion’s pri­ma­ry for­eign ex­change earn­er, the Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CTO), has been drift­ing along with­out much di­rec­tion.

Since Hugh Ri­ley, the last sec­re­tary gen­er­al and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, re­tired in June 2019, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has ex­pe­ri­enced dif­fi­cul­ties in find­ing a re­place­ment.
How­ev­er, the CTO an­nounced in a news re­lease last week that it had fi­nal­ly found a suc­ces­sor–it had aban­doned a pre­vi­ous at­tempt some three years ago–in the per­son of St. Lu­cian Dona Reg­is-Pros­per.

The CTO said that Reg­is-Pros­per, who hails from St. Lu­cia, is set to make his­to­ry as the first woman to as­sume lead­er­ship of the 25-mem­ber body.
“With an im­pres­sive ca­reer that spans more than 22 years, Reg­is-Pros­per brings an un­par­al­leled depth and breadth of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence in the tourism in­dus­try to the CTO.

“She has lived and worked in mul­ti­ple Caribbean des­ti­na­tions, and served as di­rec­tor of mar­ket­ing and prod­uct de­vel­op­ment of the St. Lu­cia Air and Sea­ports Au­thor­i­ty; Di­rec­tor of Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment for Mar­gar­i­taville Caribbean Group in Ja­maica; CEO of the Tor­to­la Pier Park in the British Vir­gin Is­lands; and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of the An­tigua Cruise Port where she is cur­rent­ly em­ployed,” ac­cord­ing to the CTO’s news re­lease.
Reg­is-Pros­per takes over the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s lead­er­ship reins from act­ing sec­re­tary gen­er­al and CEO Neil Wal­ters, CTO’s di­rec­tor of fi­nance and re­source man­age­ment.

Of her new role, Reg­is-Pros­per stat­ed: “I am deeply hon­ored to have been se­lect­ed to serve as Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the CTO and am grate­ful for the trust and con­fi­dence the CTO Coun­cil of Min­is­ters and Com­mis­sion­ers of Tourism and the Board of Di­rec­tors have placed in me.

“I ea­ger­ly look for­ward to work­ing with our ded­i­cat­ed team and di­verse stake­hold­ers to pro­mote the Caribbean tourism sec­tor, cham­pi­on sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and con­tin­ue to fos­ter im­pact­ful re­la­tion­ships and de­liv­er ROI for our mem­bers.”

In its Ju­ly 13 press re­lease an­nounc­ing the ap­point­ment, the CTO stressed Reg­is-Pros­per’s “im­pres­sive” ca­reer and “un­par­al­leled depth and breadth of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence” in tourism. This ex­pe­ri­ence, it said, in­clud­ed liv­ing and work­ing in mul­ti­ple Caribbean des­ti­na­tions, and serv­ing as di­rec­tor of mar­ket­ing and prod­uct de­vel­op­ment of the St. Lu­cia Air and Sea­ports Au­thor­i­ty; di­rec­tor of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment for Mar­gar­i­taville Caribbean Group in Ja­maica; CEO of the Tor­to­la Pier Park in the British Vir­gin Is­lands; and gen­er­al man­ag­er of the An­tigua Cruise Port.
The new fe­male SG, whose four-year con­tract be­gins from Sep­tem­ber 1, has a Mas­ter of Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion de­gree, Cer­ti­fied Pro­fes­sion­al Mar­keter qual­i­fi­ca­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence in busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, strat­e­gy, mar­ket­ing and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.
Sev­er­al sources told Busi­ness Guardian that for­mer CEO of To­ba­go Tourism Agency, Louis Lewis was short­list­ed for the job of Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and felt he was the bet­ter can­di­date in the fi­nal in­ter­views “hands down.”

Ac­cord­ing to CTO sta­tis­tics, the tourism in­dus­try brought in be­tween US$36.5 bil­lion and US$37.5 bil­lion in rev­enue to the Caribbean last year, an in­crease of about per cent when com­pared to 2021, a year im­pact­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of Tourism Ed­mund Bartlett, in­di­cat­ed that he was not part of the se­lec­tion process, but em­pha­sised his faith in the chair­man, the Cay­man Is­lands’ Tourism and Ports Min­is­ter Ken­neth Bryan, and his plea­sure that a woman would be at the helm of the CTO.
Lewis, along with Reg­is-Pros­per, was se­lect­ed for fi­nal in­ter­views in New York in ear­ly June, af­ter what the CTO de­scribed as a “rig­or­ous se­lec­tion process [which] in­clud­ed mul­ti­ple rounds of in­ter­views.”

Re­gion­al tourism sources point­ed to Lewis’s vast ex­pe­ri­ence and suc­cess­es at the des­ti­na­tion lev­el, both as a head of tourism boards and as a for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, as well as a for­mer econ­o­mist at the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank and his qual­i­fi­ca­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence in re­search.