Experts to Look into Caribbean Travel, Economic Recovery

Caribbean News…
09 December 2020 11:27pm
Caribbean

Strategies for the quick recovery of Caribbean economies from the devastation wrought by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic will be discussed by regional and global stakeholders at a virtual forum hosted by the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), and the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC) on Friday, Dec. 11.

Moderated by veteran Caribbean journalist Julian Rogers, “Tourism: The Key to the Caribbean’s Economic Recovery” will bring together public and private sector leaders, the international tourism development community, members of civil society and the media to identify lessons learned from the pandemic and to address how the highly tourism-dependent region can harness the economic power of tourism to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and revitalize the region’s economies.

Panelists include Lisa Cummins, Barbados’s minister of tourism and chairman of CTO; Edmund Bartlett, minister of tourism of Jamaica and co-chair of GTRCMC; Frank Comito, CHTA’s CEO and director general; Michel Julian, senior program officer with the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO); and Virginia Messina, managing director of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). Other Caribbean leaders are expected to join the discussion.

A key goal of the forum is to assess tourism’s impact on Caribbean economies and identify joint actions that can facilitate tourism’s recovery and strengthen the region’s economies.

The forum will draw upon the thinking of the participating organizations as well as the desire of many Caribbean heads of government — as expressed recently at a CARICOM meeting — for the region to take a collaborative and comprehensive approach to stimulate and accelerate tourism’s recovery.

During the online forum, participants will examine the resilience of the sector and how the Caribbean’s dependence on tourism for economic stimulation will increase in the post-COVID future as tourism is likely to bounce back sooner and faster than other segments of the economy.

National, regional and global policy stakeholders are encouraged to attend the forum.

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