Tuesday, April 28, 2009Partnership Around the Caribbean

Maura CurleyTime For All Tourism Stakeholders To Step Up

Charles Dickens could have been describing the current state of the Caribbean when he wrote: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

The recent Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference (CHTIC) in Bermuda, sponsored by the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), representing the hospitality industry and the private sector, and the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), representing the governments of the region, was overshadowed by the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, scheduled the same week. Yet both events illustrated the need for unity among the Caribbean islands to weather the economic losses to the region.

They also demonstrated unprecedented opportunity for the Caribbean to claim its place on the world stage and create more prosperity for its citizens.

They showed us we must enlist the cooperation of stakeholders in the Caribbean to step up now. We need to help salvage the region’s most crucial industry – tourism, which accounts for between 22 and 75 percent of the GDP among the island countries of the region.

Three days before 34 leaders, 16 of them representing island countries in the Caribbean, converged in Trinidad for the Summit of Americas, a diverse group of bankers, investors, developers, hoteliers, and government officials gathered in Bermuda for CHTIC. Attendance was a little more than half of the 12th annual conference, held last May, at Trinidad’s new Hyatt Regency, site of this year’s Summit of the Americas. But no apologies were necessary for the smaller turnout. Everyone knew why. Last year predicting a future, which included the collapse of major financial institutions, eradication of consumer savings, cessation of personal and commercial lending, and the deception of a Madoff would have seemed like science fiction. Yet this year’s conference continued because there is strength in numbers- even small ones- and connecting and communicating with stakeholders encourages improvisation and innovation.

During opening remarks at Bermuda’s Fairmont Southampton, Bermuda’s premier Dr. Ewart Brown told delegates “These are the times in which you must do what’s required, without compromising the best interests of our people.” He said “The successful future is one of partnership across the Caribbean - where the public sector and the private sector must form more partnerships to reach mutual goals.” CTO Chairman John Maginley, minister of tourism for Antigua and Barbuda, said one of the major challenges is to remain viable in the marketplace with less revenue to spend on marketing. He challenged governments and hoteliers to work together to maintain the quality of the tourism product and find creative marketing solutions to drive visitors to the Caribbean, “as a matter of urgency to devise ways to survive this situation.”

Enrique De Marchena, managing partner of the law firm De Marchena Kaluche & Associates in the Dominican Republic, and president of Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association, hoped the conference would generate new initiatives to promote partnerships and investment opportunities in Caribbean tourism – despite "a very perilous time in the history of global economics.” De Marchena observed " The investment community is being challenged every day to produce and succeed, to keep as much of its work force … to not cause more stress in the economies, with very little possibility of obtaining any assistance from lending institutions.”

Two days of presentations and panels included projections and predictions from economists, lenders, hoteliers and suppliers.

Avery Shenfeld, managing director and senior economist for CIBC World Markets, revealed, “There is some light at the end of the tunnel as new capital and the freezing of the capital markets appear to be easing off." He cited government spending as “the ultimate weapon” and forecast it will hit the global market in the second half of the year. He predicted, "by 2011 we expect to see all of the green lights flashing.” But, he also noted, “We are not at the bottom yet.”

Duane T. Vinson, vice president of Smith Travel Research, observed hotel room rates and revenue decline has been great. He pointed out that high-end luxury properties are discounting more and that business and corporate travel, meetings and conventions are off significantly, which has a greater impact on the larger hotels.

Jean-Claude Baumgarten, president and CEO of the World Travel & Tourism Council cited long-term travel and tourism prospects in the Caribbean remain healthy, with GDP growth for the travel and tourism economy expected to average 3.3 percent per annum over the coming ten years. But in the interim travel and tourism economy is expected to contract by a staggering minus 7.9 percent in 2009. Baumgarten noted that the Caribbean region is too dependent on tourists from North America, and suggested tourism industry leaders diversify their target markets.

The 13th annual Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference generated lots of data, free exchange of ideas and networking opportunities. But in the current state of affairs, don’t we need to focus on solutions, to be implemented immediately?

Can we afford to wait for flashing green lights in 2011?

Only one speaker at CHTIC, St Croix’s Jennifer Nugent-Hill, a vice president for Tropical Shipping, mentioned activating a “crisis management plan for the region.”

The day after CHTIC concluded, the honorable Dean Barrow, prime minister of Belize and chair of Caricom, speaking at the opening ceremony of the Summit of the Americas, declared “The region’s highest earner and largest employer - tourism - is crippled in consequence of its market being predominantly drawn from the two regions most severely affected by the crisis - Europe and North America." He indicated some locations have reported "a drop of more than two thirds in visitor flows and hotel occupancies.” Barrow said “Should the global crisis persist for another eighteen months, a large proportion of our populations will regress into poverty. We will then be even more unable to contain an already unacceptably high level of violent crime.”

Last May, speaking at Caribbean Media Exchange (CMEx) in Puerto Rico Sen. Alan Chastanet, minister of tourism and civil aviation for St Lucia, and then chair of CTO, and Terestella Denton, then executive director of Puerto Rico Tourism Company, talked about the long overdue need to market the Caribbean as a region. Both of these insightful administrators revealed, in frustration, they’d narrow their focus back to their own islands, if the leaders of CARICOM, didn’t earmark a sizeable fund to market ONE Caribbean tourism. During this same meeting, Chastanet warned that if we did not move forward with new initiatives we’d "long for the days gone by."

Now we cannot even look back at the glory days of tourism, when we are holding onto a lifeboat. The time to act is long overdue.

The complex formula to create a marketing fund, suggested by Caricom is likely to be debated ad nauseum. And its contributions do not include non-Caricom communities like Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, though they are top Caribbean tourism destinations.

We should recognize that public private partnerships should involve ALL stakeholders in the region. Last year’s CHTIC was purported have resulted in $100 million in business deals. Consider how even a small percentage of that revenue could help creatively promote the dynamism and diversity of the region.

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