Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

Of­fload­ing the tax­a­tion bur­den on air trav­el in­to and around the re­gion to en­cour­age in­creased trav­el; link­ing the sev­er­al na­tion­al and pri­vate air­lines op­er­at­ing in the Caribbean in­to a net­work that al­lows for in­ter-air­line con­nec­tions; ex­pand­ing the Caribbean share of an ever-grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el mar­ket–last year 1.2 bil­lion peo­ple trav­elled the globe, a fig­ure set to in­crease to 1.8 bil­lion by 2030–link­ing the tourism econ­o­my to the pro­duc­tion sec­tors of the lo­cal and the re­gion­al econ­o­my; in­te­grat­ing Caribbean tourism des­ti­na­tions to give the trav­eller op­tions of vis­it­ing sev­er­al is­lands and cul­tures, and min­imis­ing trav­el bu­reau­cra­cy that now en­cum­bers the trav­eller were among the ma­jor is­sues raised and analysed at the State of the Tourism In­dus­try Con­fer­ence held re­cent­ly in Bar­ba­dos.

They are not new is­sues. In fact, they go to the heart of the un­der­de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean economies and so­ci­eties in the post-colo­nial pe­ri­od. The out­stand­ing chal­lenge is to cul­ti­vate the po­lit­i­cal will and en­tre­pre­neur­ial at­ti­tudes to go af­ter ob­jec­tives which are well known. This is com­pared to the his­tor­i­cal role that was de­ter­mined for the Caribbean to sub­serve the in­ter­est of the metro­pole. We are still min­ing and ex­port­ing raw ma­te­ri­als and se­mi-fin­ished prod­ucts and pur­chas­ing the fin­ished prod­ucts from Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca.

We need to rein­vent our­selves.

For more than 60 years, the bright­est eco­nom­ic minds have pro­posed a way for­ward with lit­tle suc­cess of achieve­ment. The best of our po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions and the most en­tre­pre­neur­ial of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty have failed to trans­form the one-horse Caribbean econ­o­my.

How to link pro­duc­tion of our most com­pet­i­tive ex­port crops, prod­ucts and ser­vices (tourism) with the rest of the econ­o­my to en­joy the spin-off ben­e­fits is a chal­lenge. Tourism Min­is­ter of The Ba­hamas, Obie Wilch­combe, notes that in the Ba­hamas, one of the largest and most "suc­cess­ful" tourism economies in the re­gion, 80 cents out of every dol­lar spent by the tourist leaks out to for­eign sup­pli­ers of goods and ser­vices for the tourist.

The Cen­tral Bank of Bar­ba­dos re­ports that the tourism in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­enced a five per cent in­crease in re­ceipts for 2015, yet the gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) of the coun­try ad­vanced by a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly in­signif­i­cant 0.5 per cent. The macro-eco­nom­ic da­ta gives the im­pres­sion that there are lim­it­ed link­ages of the buoy­ant tourism econ­o­my with the rest of the Bar­ba­dos econ­o­my and so­ci­ety–it is a re­gion­al pat­tern.

Ho­n­our­ing our Lega­cy; Defin­ing our Fu­ture, the theme of the CTO con­fer­ence, was recog­nised in a most in­sight­ful man­ner through wax im­ages of two of the great­est bear­ers of the West In­di­an lega­cy, the in­com­pa­ra­ble Sir Garfield Sobers and the ge­nius of Bri­an Lara. Un­be­liev­able tal­ent and skills, the demon­strat­ed ca­pac­i­ty for in­no­va­tion and in­ven­tive­ness, and the re­fusal to be bound­ed by tra­di­tion­al dog­ma and ap­proach­es are some of the defin­ing lega­cies of these two great West In­di­ans.

If I want­ed to ar­gue with the CTO–and yes I want to, I would say a wax im­age of Sir Frank Wor­rell had to be there too to in­di­cate his lega­cy in lead­er­ship, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, dis­ci­pline, strate­gic think­ing, and the ca­pac­i­ty to in­te­grate the re­gion in a man­ner nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore and af­ter. These are lega­cies to be em­u­lat­ed as we seek to de­fine our fu­ture.

The task for the tourism in­dus­try and the en­tire Caribbean is how to trans­fer that lega­cy in­to a new, defin­ing and in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach to tourism and gen­er­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

Tax­a­tion of the air­line in­dus­try av­er­ages be­tween 35 to 70 per cent (In­sel fig­ures) on the air­line tick­et. This cap­ture of an in­dus­try must be re­lin­quished to em­pir­i­cal da­ta for gov­ern­ments des­per­ate for tax rev­enue to come to an un­der­stand­ing and be brave enough to low­er tax­es on the air­line tick­et and open the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a greater in­flux of tourists from out­side and with­in. The ex­pe­ri­ence is that when such ad­just­ment of tax­es is done, the des­ti­na­tion achieves a dou­bling of ar­rivals. It has been done in des­ti­na­tions such as Colom­bia, states an of­fi­cial of In­sel Air­line.

Once up­on a time, the ar­gu­ment was for one re­gion­al air­line. To­day, the more ra­tio­nal ap­proach is to forge link­ages be­tween and among air car­ri­ers, in­clud­ing for­eign air­lines, fly­ing in­to and around the Caribbean through an open skies pol­i­cy, say avi­a­tion ex­perts.

In To­ba­go, ques­tions–a few of them le­git­i­mate–are be­ing asked about the on­ly in­dige­nous Caribbean ho­tel brand name, San­dals, which is de­sirous of es­tab­lish­ing a re­sort. Well, the Hiltons, Hy­atts, Four Sea­sons and oth­ers are in the Caribbean: what is the prob­lem with San­dals? Is it that we still don't trust our­selves? Let us ne­go­ti­ate the best deal pos­si­ble.

The pro­duc­tion of food and pro­vi­sion of man­u­fac­tured items used in ho­tel room and at bara by the 30 mil­lion vis­i­tors to the re­gion is mar­ket for lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs.

The re­gion­al pri­vate sec­tor should al­so come alive and take on risks to mar­ket and sell the cul­tur­al lega­cy of the re­gion to vis­i­tors and to our­selves: a mul­ti-lan­guage lega­cy; the per­form­ing and vi­su­al artistes; the en­vi­ron­ment of the moun­tains, the land­scape, the sea, the flo­ra and fau­na. Lin­ger­ing still in a few is­land-na­tions is the cul­ture of our Amerindi­an an­ces­tors which needs to be sal­vaged and shared.

Learn­ing to trea­sure and make cap­i­tal of the in­tel­lec­tu­al gifts of Caribbean cit­i­zens should re­sult in dis­plays, mu­se­ums, and demon­stra­tions of the works of our writ­ers and artistes. This could be our "last train to San Fer­nan­do."