THE Caribbean region is yet to tap into the full reserves of its tourism potential, thus proving itself as a front-runner among other world-wide competitors, Secretary-General of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), Hugh Riley has said.

Coming out of the 24th Inter-American Congress of Ministers and High-level Authorities of Tourism which began on Wednesday at the Marriott hotel, Riley spoke to the media on the matter of building resilience in the tourism-dependent Caribbean. The CTO Secretary-General established that the business of tourism is a highly competitive one and as more persons begin travelling internationally, it is the responsibility of the region to position itself to benefit and grow from these conditions.
Tourism, he said, is the economic driver of the Caribbean, employing nearly 2.5 million persons in the region while contributing between 50 and 60 billion dollars to the regional coffers yearly.

“To the extent that we can do a better job of bringing more people and bringing more profits into the Caribbean, it’s helpful to increasing the standard of living that we have and relieving poverty,” he said.
However, Riley pointed out that tourism in the Caribbean cannot thrive on its own, but requires connectivity through intra-Caribbean tourism through means of twin destinations and multi-destination tourism, which he said is yet to be properly explored and implemented.

“We have to fix the connectivity. We have to reduce and remove some of the barriers to entry that we have. Hassle-free travel around the Caribbean is one of the goals of which all of us are involved in [sic] tourism planning and promotion,” he outlined.
The Secretary-General said that it is the sixth consecutive year of increases in numbers to the Caribbean with 2017 seeing just over 30 million visitors to the region, a larger number than ever before in its history.

However, compared to the rest of the world, Riley says these numbers are not increasing as fast as they ought to in a region with the advantage of a wide diversity of tourism which is why togetherness remains key.
“We’re never going to reach the full potential though if we try as individual countries to make our voice heard. We have a responsibility to do that as individual countries…but if we ever pooled our resources…we would then have the opportunity to make a louder noise, to really go out into the market with the impact that we absolutely need,” he stressed.
A conflict, however, exists with the CTO which wishes to increase the amount of air-travel through means such as reduced airfares while the aviation community aims to benefit from the said increase in travel.
Riley said that almost all of the airlines of the Caribbean are members of the CTO which enables the body to regularly interact with these carriers for discussions on barriers which may pose divisions to the two sectors.

“We discovered that what’s preventing us from growing the intra-Caribbean travel to its full potential fall into the categories of legal and regulatory; safety and security issues; the economics of travel…and the passenger experience,” the CTO Secretary-General explained.
Fortunately, deliberating on these issues and more will be representatives from 192 member states world-wide during the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Air Transport Conference which will be held in Guyana in November.
Speaking on the sidelines with Director of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), Egbert Field, he related to this newspaper that tourism and aviation go hand-in-hand and that the CTO would be invited to the year-end conference for further discussions on the said issues faced.

“We’ll be inviting them because both tourism and air-travel; they are linked together like Siamese twins. One cannot go forward without the aid of the other…one will benefit the other. Increased tourism will benefit increased travel,” he stated.
Speaking on the matter of air-travel becoming more economical, Field said that the possibility existed but would be determined by several other factors.
“Any time you have increased uplift which means increased airlines or increased movement of aircraft available to individuals, then there is competition and that should help to bring the price down,” Field explained, adding:

“It would not go below the operating cost of the airline but there should be some amount of margin that can be moved to a lower level, thus encouraging people to fly more.”
Based on the covered and upcoming agenda of the 24th Inter-American Congress of Ministers and High-level Authorities of Tourism being hosted in Guyana, the GCAA Director says that the upcoming Air Transport Conference will surely benefit the discussions.