Caribbean Community (CARICOM) governments have given the green light for the region to establish a US $60 million marketing fund to promote the Caribbean as a single destination, Chairman of the CARICOM Task Force on Tourism, Allan Chastanet (right) has announced.
Chastanet, who is also the Tourism Minister in St. Lucia, told reporters that the regional leaders, who spent Wednesday discussing the industry that provides thousands of jobs to their nationals, had given a 60-day deadline to formulate how the funds would be raised for the venture.
He said that CARICOM countries would pay US$21 million while the remainder would come from the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA), the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) and other stakeholders.
“We are having similar discussions with the Dutch Antilles, the French Antilles, and United States territories and also with the Spanish speaking countries as well as the cruise industry.
“The goal is by the end of this year to raise at least 60 million US dollars to start a worldwide campaign for Caribbean tourism,” he said.
Chastanet, who is also the CTO chairman, said he expected the promotional activities to begin soon after the Presidential election in the United States that is carded for November.
Chastanet said that a number of presentations had been made to the regional leaders regarding new strategies to ensure the survival of the industry given the various problems facing the industry including rising fuel prices, cut backs by United States airlines to the region and competition from other destinations.
He said as part of the new initiatives it was felt that there was need for improvement in the inter-regional airline system and that the hubs operating in Barbados, Antigua and Montego Bay in Jamaica in particular “must be functioning more effectively than they have been.
“The ability of the inter-regional carriers to interline with other carriers, being able to provide cost effective connections, the elimination of in transit taxes and the ability for people to check in to another flight without having to go through Customs, immigration and re-checking are some of the basic things we have to be able to make sure that are in place”.
Chastanet said that the leaders had agreed that the Transport Committee headed by St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, would be reviewing the recommendations and “hopefully very early action would be taken”.
He said that the meeting had also agreed in principle that tourism ministers would now participate as part of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) the second highest decision making body within the 15-member grouping.
He said that another recommendation made to the regional leaders calls for a closer collaboration with the United States government “to see if we could get them to exempt people travelling to the Caribbean from having to pay the US $ 40 departure tax”.
Chastanet said that regional governments were also urged to work with Washington to “get a policy position that as many countries that would like to open up pre-clearance facilities in the Caribbean, once they meet the criteria, they can do so and the third one was to try and increase the duty free allowance for Americans when they come here.
“The last one would require us working with both Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in getting their support before we went back to the US,” he said, adding that the support of the regional leaders at the meeting on Wednesday provides the impetus to work with two United States lawmakers in seeking to have that included in the re-wording of the new Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) bill.
“I found the meeting to be very useful,” said Chastanet flanked by his tourism counterparts from the Bahamas Brent Symonette and Harold Lovell from Antigua and Barbuda.
Lovell described the deliberations as “very engaging” adding “ I believe that we have succeeded in bringing tourism to the fore and institutionalizing the tourism forum as one of the critical organs of CARICOM”.
Lovell said the acceptance of the marketing plan by the leaders was the most “defining moment” of the meeting.
“Listening to the heads most of them agreed that we had not made this much progress in the past and I think there was general consensus that notwithstanding efforts which had been made, for example following 9/11, that this appears to be the most sustained, most organized and the most serious commitment that is being made by CARICOM.”
Lovell acknowledged the likely problems that could arise from the marketing plan because “we are dealing with several sovereign nations” but noted that “very shortly we will have a sustainable marketing plan for the Caribbean”.
