Sustainability Is the Name of the Game for Caribbean’s Tourism

Exclusive interview with Carol Hay, director of Marketing UK & Europe for the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) within the framework of World Travel Market (WTM) in London

Carol Hay, who serves as director of Marketing for the UK and Europe within the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), is a well-known face for both World Travel Market and Caribbean News Digital (CND), a news media organization that has interviewed her a number of times in recent years.

This time around, she sat down again with CND in London to explain how the tradeshow has faired for her so far, the islands that have failed to attend WTM 2018 and other important matters related to travel and tourism in the Caribbean region.

“It’s been just another World Travel Market for us and it’s been a great show for the Caribbean. We’ve had some really good meetings with tour operators, with travel agencies, with the media. Of course, people are very keen to see how well the Caribbean is doing. We had our challenges in 2017, but we have moved beyond that now and the Caribbean is looking forward to a great winter,” Mrs. Hay said at the top of this interview.

One of the highlights of day one at WTM was a seminar on disaster prevention and counteractions, with special focus on the Caribbean, where natural disasters are common, especially those caused by hurricanes, tropical storms and earthquakes.

Since a majority of the Caribbean travel destinations are island states, Mrs. Hay believes it’s very important to bear that particular fact in mind.

“We’re susceptible to climate change issues. We do not wait for an incident to happen and then take actions. We’re very proactive in working toward a very sustainable Caribbean, so there has been a lot of plans, not only with tourism, but with the environmental agencies to ensure we continue to protect our coastlines. We’re also looking at the structure of our hotels just to make sure that our hotels being built or refurbished have standards that can endure hurricanes and earthquakes,” the CTO high-ranking official told Caribbean News Digital during an exclusive interview.

APD (air passenger duty) taxes continue to be a thorn in the Caribbean’s side, mainly for those small Caribbean islands that depend heavily on the UK as a top outbound market. In that respect, Mrs. Hay says that the organization she works for continues to lobby against the APD in the face of possible increases to be levied on long-haul travel.

“We continue to lobby against it because we always hoped that these taxes were implemented to fight green issues and we haven’t really seen the evidence of this. So, we feel that if a tax is being charged for airline passenger duty, then it should be a relative charge and not a high charge that we were told it’s being used to counter environmental issues. We understand taxation; we too in the Caribbean have our taxes also and we understand that governments must charge taxes, but we feel that the APD for long-haul travel is an unfair tax and, therefore, it should be addressed,” the CTO chief of marketing for the UK and European markets went on to explain.

On the flip side of the coin, however, airlift from Europe has never posed a major drawback for the region. The Caribbean boasts excellent regular air connections from the UK by the hand of Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, as well as charter flights provided by Thomas Cook and TUI.

“It’s really important for us to try and sustain our airlink. We also accept that some destinations may not be able to accommodate jets. But what’s important for us is that we access all major gateways across Europe and North America with seamless connectivity into the Caribbean,” Mrs. Hay says further into the interview.

When asked whether the CTO will be attending FITUR -Spain’s International Travel and Tourism Fair held every January in Madrid- Mrs. Hay told Caribbean News Digital that they plan to attend, but they “haven’t finalized the arrangements yet.”

MICE tourism is no doubt one of the fastest-growing market niches in today’s travel, so the Caribbean -Mrs. Hay beams- is not willing to lag behind.

“The MICE sector is very important for the Caribbean. There’s a number of hotels and resorts in the Caribbean that have conference centers, conference facilities, meeting rooms. As the general economy stabilizes, you see companies that are willing to invest more in overseas conferences and events.

“In the Caribbean, we’re fortunate to have the airlink, the accommodation, a very well-skilled workforce, and we happen to be a multilanguage region as well. So, the MICE market is a sector we’re putting a lot of focus on and paying a lot of attention to. We want to make the MICE market grow and we certainly want to showcase the services and the facilities we have in the Caribbean,” she went on to explain.

At the end of this exclusive interview, Carol Hay made her case for sustainability in the Caribbean, one of the world regions that’s pouring more efforts and resources into that endeavor.

“Sustainability is very important to the Caribbean. As well as having our State of the Industry Conference (SOTIC), we also have our sustainable tourism conference. Tourism is big business for the Caribbean, but tourism must also focus on protecting the economy and the environment and the communities. Because of that, we continue to work with our Caribbean partners, with international organizations, to ensure that the Caribbean consistently meets international standards as well as our own standards,” she concluded.