Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

When it comes to tourism, Be­lize’s goals are clear: the coun­try aims to be­come a “unique, au­then­tic, sus­tain­able, and com­pet­i­tive world-class des­ti­na­tion” by 2030. To do this, the coun­try de­vel­oped a Na­tion­al Sus­tain­able Tourism Mas­ter Plan (NSTMP), a 20-year strat­e­gy that guides in­fra­struc­ture, gov­er­nance, and in­vest­ment de­ci­sions, ac­cord­ing to Be­lize Chief Tourism Of­fi­cer Jo­sue Car­ballo.

Up­dat­ed in 2024 to ac­count for post-pan­dem­ic changes and in­cor­po­rate cli­mate re­silience strate­gies, in­clud­ing a com­mit­ment to plant one mil­lion trees and oth­er sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives, Car­ballo said the plan is built on da­ta and, more im­por­tant­ly, long-term plan­ning.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s Sus­tain­able Tourism Con­fer­ence in Be­lize last week, Car­ballo ex­plained that Be­lize fo­cus­es on high-val­ue, low-im­pact tourism, aim­ing to in­crease vis­i­tor spend­ing and the length of stay.

Lever­ag­ing its strengths in the blue, green, and or­ange economies, Be­lize has seen overnight stays in 2025 rise to 551,698 based on pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures, a 9.6 per cent in­crease from pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els.

But with tourism ac­count­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 to 46 per cent of the coun­try’s US$6.5 bil­lion GDP, how does the coun­try stay on track when a change in gov­ern­ment could mean a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent vi­sion?

Car­ballo said lead­ers have to think be­yond pol­i­tics.

“That’s crit­i­cal when you talk about medi­um to long-term plan­ning,” Car­ballo said.

He added: “Back when the NSTMP was done, con­sul­ta­tion was on board with the gov­ern­ment and with the op­po­si­tion. It’s im­por­tant from the be­gin­ning to have par­tic­i­pa­tion from all ma­jor en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties on both ends. So, they un­der­stand the process, they be­come a part of it, and then it be­comes a 15, 20, 30-year plan.”

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, the con­cept of a long-term plan may still seem as­pi­ra­tional. Past gov­ern­ments have of­ten dis­card­ed plans and projects cre­at­ed by ri­val po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

But as To­ba­go be­gins im­ple­ment­ing its own tourism plans un­der the Far­ley Au­gus­tine-led ad­min­is­tra­tion, Tourism, An­tiq­ui­ties and Cre­ative In­dus­tries Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett told Guardian Me­dia the key lies in build­ing a sol­id plan.

“We hope that gov­er­nance is con­tin­u­ous. That is the aim, that you build plans so sol­id that even if a gov­ern­ment changes, they see the val­ue and mer­it in that plan,” she said, stress­ing the need for tech­nocrats and pub­lic ser­vants to trans­fer in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge “whether a par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion is at the helm or not.”

The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty cur­rent­ly holds all 15 seats in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, so un­like Be­lize, there is no op­po­si­tion to con­sult.

How­ev­er, Hack­ett said the TPP is work­ing with a 20-year plan for To­ba­go, one that ex­tends be­yond an elec­tion man­i­festo.

“We sat down and pulled out, as a seg­ment of the strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plan­ning path­way, what we knew was a bite-sized por­tion that was re­al­is­able with­in this four-year pe­ri­od. And so, we have been stick­ing very close­ly to it.

“Every sin­gle el­e­ment of the gov­er­nance struc­ture has to stick to that plan. We re­view it quar­ter­ly. We spend time re­al­ly go­ing over whether or not they’re still vi­able and still as rel­e­vant as we ex­pect them to be.”

Hack­ett al­so re­vealed that the TPP is build­ing on el­e­ments of plans cre­at­ed by the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, with ad­just­ments, as part of what she de­scribed as ma­ture gov­er­nance.

“If we are re­al­ly cus­to­di­ans of the pub­lic purse, then we would un­der­stand when a plan is a good plan. And a plan that ben­e­fits the peo­ple should be, with ma­ture and re­spon­si­ble gov­er­nance, ex­e­cut­ed to that place of com­ple­tion. Gov­ern­ment come, gov­ern­ment go.”