Speech by Secretary General of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), Jean Holder, on Caribbean Tourism Day

This year, we once again celebrate Caribbean Tourism Day on the 5th November 2002 and our chosen theme is “Tourism, a tool for Sustainable Development.”

We are mindful that the world has changed dramatically in the past thirteen months because of heinous terrorist attacks. Everyone’s life has been affected, but because terror is the mortal enemy of travel and tourism, those of us who work in that industry have been presented with challenges the like of which have never been seen before.

The events of September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington, followed by Tunisia and Yemen and Bali in 2002, have had a deleterious impact on Caribbean and global tourism.

As a direct result of these events, millions of jobs and billions of dollars have been lost around the world. Every sub-sector of the tourism industry has been negatively impacted and both small and massive enterprises are fighting for survival.

Here in our Caribbean which is four times more dependent on tourism for its socio-economic development than any other part of the world, our economies have suffered a great deal. We are conscious therefore that the situation calls for special efforts and we have no option but to fight our way back to economic health. As difficult as these times may be, therefore, they present us with opportunities to reassess, re-examine and re-discover the tourism industry, which more than any other, has the potential to contribute to the sustainable development of our people and region.

We start with many advantages. We are blessed with an abundance of natural beauty, and our people in the Caribbean have created a way of life, and a way of looking at life, that have proven irresistible for millions of people around the globe who seek their own special place for relaxation, recreation and rejuvenation. The Caribbean Tourism brand is unique, diverse and special; and I remain confident about the resilience of the industry and that of Caribbean people to cope with, and conquer the current crisis.

The region’s public and private sectors have together created a regional Tourism Strategic Plan which seeks to guide us on our way over the next 10 years and has a vision of a Caribbean tourism industry that is fully understood and embraced by the peoples of the region and which, through cooperative action among governments and with the private sector, makes a significant and sustainable contribution to development in both mature and emerging destinations.

This when translated into simple language means a tourism industry that brings direct benefits to our communities, alleviate poverty, preserves our cultural patrimony and our environment and generally speaking contributes towards elevating the quality of life of all our people.

The plan gives detailed prescriptions for solutions to our problems but we need to do what we have not done well in the past, which is to move from conception to execution.

Last week in the Bahamas when the 25th Annual Tourism Conference of CTO opened, two groups of young people, some under 3 years of age and others under 20, sat among an audience of some 1000 delegates to hear the Prime Minister of the Bahamas speak to the theme of Reinventing Caribbean Tourism. He was followed by several well known experts in the field. But when the youth of the region were later given a chance to say how they saw tourism and what shape it should take in the future, their ideas were so creative and their thoughts so profound, that it brought tears to the eyes of their audience.

As I speak to the young people from schools assembled at CTO today to celebrate Caribbean Tourism Day, I have considerable hope that you understand, as many of your elders did not, that tourism can be a great tool for Caribbean tourism development, but that it requires that each and everyone of us understand what is involved in this process and makes a commitment to do his or her part. There is much that you will have to put right. But