Warning Bells for Caribbean Tourism
Turbulent economic times have set off warning bells for Caribbean tourism officials who are fully aware that any upheaval in the global economy -if left unchecked- could spell disaster for the main driver of economic activity in the region.
A recent United Nations World Tourism Barometer report indicated that tourism confidence has weakened in some markets tied to increased economic volatility.
However, tourism business in The Bahamas and the Caribbean has not yet suffered dramatically as a result, Secretary General of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) Vincent Vanderpool Wallace told the Bahama Journal Tuesday in a telephone interview from his Barbados office.
The World Tourism Barometer report showed that last year international tourist arrivals grew by an estimated six percent to reach a new record figure of 900 million which was nearly 52 million more tourist arrivals than the year before.
In the Caribbean region, there were 19.3 million international tourist arrivals, according to the report, which also indicated that the overall prospects for 2008 are positive.
The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism has yet to reveal the total tourist arrival figures for 2007. However, according to the ministry’s preliminary data, between January and October there were just under four million visitors to The Bahamas which was 3.8 percent less than the total number of tourists here between January and October 2006.
According to figures from the ministry, there were 4.7 million visitors in 2006 and 4.8 million in 2005. The figures for both years followed the five million visitor mark reached in 2004.
The tourism business in The Bahamas is undergoing a major transition from reliance on traditional mega-hotel destination travel, to include a larger number of smaller, mixed-use and environmentally-sensitive resorts.
In addition, advertising and public relations strategies are being fine-tuned to take into account the strengthened euro and Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar, which make vacations in this region increasingly attractive for Europeans and Canadian visitors.
