Raphael John-Lall

Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences and se­nior lec­tur­er of Tourism at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Dr Acol­la Cameron wants the tourism sec­tor to be tak­en more se­ri­ous­ly as an en­gine for eco­nom­ic growth, rather than mere “to­kenism” in the de­bate on how to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.

“Tourism has no po­lit­i­cal le­git­i­ma­cy. It is one of those sec­tors that is talked about, is re­ferred to but you have not seen that sort of com­mit­ment to ful­ly de­vel­op the sec­tor to its true po­ten­tial. Linked to this is tourism tends to be treat­ed as to­kenism for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. So, you will hear the word tout­ed that we need to di­ver­si­fy and tourism is iden­ti­fied as one of the sec­tors but not giv­en the req­ui­site back­ing to take it to the lev­el of its Caribbean neigh­bours,”said Cameron.

As a re­sult of the lack of the req­ui­site back­ing, what has been no­ticed in the lo­cal con­text is that there tends to be a shift­ing of the pri­or­i­ties for tourism.

“To­day, there is a fo­cus on busi­ness tourism, in an­oth­er sea­son, the em­pha­sis shifts to eco-tourism, then sport tourism. So, there is a con­stant shift­ing in pri­or­i­ties which is an­oth­er fac­tor defin­ing the con­text we find our­selves in lo­cal­ly,” she said.

Cameron spoke at a we­bi­nar host­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Unit, en­ti­tled “Tourism: a vi­able de­vel­op­ment op­tion for T&T and the wider Caribbean?”

She said in T&T stake­hold­ers need to “get set­tled” and the Gov­ern­ment has to de­ter­mine the role of this im­por­tant sec­tor in the econ­o­my.

“The Gov­ern­ment needs to make a de­ci­sion once and for all on the role of tourism in sus­tain­ing the lo­cal econ­o­my in these ex­is­ten­tial times. Should it be con­sid­ered as a pri­or­i­ty sec­tor for mean­ing­ful de­vel­op­ment, then this de­ci­sion must be sup­port­ed by a clear vi­sion that is com­mu­ni­cat­ed at every lev­el of so­ci­ety. We can­not be vac­il­lat­ing as to whether or not we should con­sid­er tourism, just make a de­ci­sion once and for all. This vi­sion must be not just stat­ed but sup­port­ed by the req­ui­site fund­ing not a sit­u­a­tion where the tourism in­sti­tu­tions con­stant­ly have to come cap in hand for fund­ing but the vi­sion must be sup­port­ed by a bud­get that can de­liv­er on the vi­sion.”

She al­so urged T&T to “get smart” which means tech­nol­o­gy must be lever­aged lead­ing to a smart ex­pe­ri­ence for the vis­i­tor.

“This is one which en­hances the tourist ex­pe­ri­ence through per­son­al­i­sa­tion, con­text aware­ness, and re­al-time mon­i­tor­ing. There has to be an in­crease in the use of dig­i­tal plat­forms and tech­nolo­gies among tourism busi­ness op­er­a­tors. This is crit­i­cal as it will in­crease the vis­i­bil­i­ty of the in­di­vid­ual op­er­a­tor as well as the des­ti­na­tion and make it more con­ve­nient for po­ten­tial vis­i­tors to book ex­pe­ri­ences to the des­ti­na­tions.

“The fun­da­men­tal point is that if you are not on­line, you are not on sale. They must en­sure that the lo­cal tourism busi­ness has reg­u­lar­ly up­dat­ed web­sites, ac­tive so­cial me­dia plat­forms where vis­i­tors can eas­i­ly gain prod­uct or ser­vices in­for­ma­tion, ver­i­fy ac­cu­ra­cy via re­views and book ex­pe­ri­ences in re­al time.”

She spoke about T&T hav­ing an “ex­ces­sive de­pen­dence” on small source mar­kets which cre­ate vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty for the sec­tor and the need to find new mar­kets.

“We have no­ticed that we are heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on the di­as­po­ra and very few source mar­kets for quite a num­ber of years. And so, what is re­quired at this junc­ture is de­vel­op­ing ro­bust mar­ket in­tel­li­gence that can help us iden­ti­fy trends in tourism sup­ply and de­mand.”

She said hav­ing a tourism sec­tor that brings eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty means gen­er­at­ing qual­i­ty jobs and in­fra­struc­ture.

“When we are think­ing of is­land economies that are in large part de­pen­dent on tourism, we have to face the press­ing is­sue how can we make tourism a more vi­able sec­tor in these un­cer­tain times and even to go as far as to en­sure the so­cio-eco­nom­ic sur­vival of the re­gion.

“What is meant by tourism eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty? We are pur­su­ing lo­cal pros­per­i­ty where we want to en­sure there is max­imi­sa­tion of vis­i­tor spend in the econ­o­my. We are al­so pur­su­ing em­ploy­ment qual­i­ty. We are af­ter in­creas­ing the num­ber of em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties as well as the num­ber of jobs gen­er­at­ed by tourism. Third­ly, we are talk­ing about eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits so in­creas­ing for­eign ex­change, at­tract­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI), en­cour­ag­ing in­vest­ment in new in­fra­struc­ture.”

Crime’s im­pact

UWI Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics, Roger Ho­sein who al­so spoke at the we­bi­nar warned that if left unchecked, the in­creas­ing crime rate in T&T will con­tin­ue to dam­age the econ­o­my and specif­i­cal­ly the tourism sec­tor.

“One of the things that we have to work on is the re­la­tion­ship be­tween homi­cides and in­ter­na­tion­al overnight vis­i­tors to T&T. What I found when I looked at the da­ta is af­ter homi­cides crossed 400 per an­num in T&T, there tends to be an im­pact on overnight vis­i­tors and that is some­thing that the pol­i­cy­mak­ers will want to look at.

“We can tap in­to the Not­ting Hill car­ni­val, the Toron­to car­ni­val, the car­ni­vals that take place through­out the world that are in some way de­rived from T&T’s Car­ni­val and see if we can mar­ket our Car­ni­val through those in­ter­na­tion­al events and get peo­ple there to our Car­ni­val with for­eign ex­change ca­pac­i­ty.”

He used the Ja­maican ex­am­ple of a coun­try with a high crime rate but suc­cess­ful tourism in­dus­try.

“The stum­bling block that I think for T&T is re­al­ly is how do we push to at­tract more tourists in­to T&T with this hor­ren­dous crime lev­el. When you say that, some peo­ple would say to you that in Ja­maica there are a lot of tourists flow­ing to Ja­maica and they have a very crime lev­el. While it may hap­pen in Ja­maica and they may get some tourists even with a high mur­der lev­el, in T&T it may not work so. I think that we have to be­come ag­gres­sive in the pur­suit of this tourism dol­lar with all the nec­es­sary in­ter-link­ages and all the nec­es­sary in­sti­tu­tion­al sup­port be­cause it might be our sav­ing grace at this point in time, giv­en the out­look for the en­er­gy sec­tor in the medi­um terms.”