When 80 percent of your Caribbean tourism product is nature-based, and 80 percent of your market increasingly demands eco-based services and experiences, it doesn’t take science to figure out that sustaining a high-quality ecology is simply smart business (read: EQ, not IQ).

Can the Caribbean region one day welcome 30 million stayover visitors to its shores? Why not? Speaking to attendees at this week’s State of the Industry conference in St Thomas, Caribbean Tourism Organization Secretary General Hugh Riley said 30 million annual visitors was a number “we have our eye on.”

Aviation taxes increase the cost of travel to the Caribbean and make the islands less competitive with other destinations, warned Peter Cerda, IATA's regional vice president for the Americas.

Until there is huge investment in marketing, airlift, tourism plant, and language training, the prospect of an appreciable and steady flow of Chinese tourists will remain remote. If Caribbean countries genuinely want a share of Chinese tourism, rigorous work has to be undertaken now to make fundamental preparations for what is a long-term project.

It’s just a matter of time before the United States of America lifts its travel ban on Cuba, and when that happens, a flood of pent-up demand will be unleashed, bringing with it a monumental threat to the tourism dependent English-speaking Caribbean.

Tourism destinations and companies need to continuously evolve in order to adapt to a constantly changing global marketplace. The latest UNWTO report speaks about the key market intelligence, statistic and tools for risk and crisis management as well as for destination management.