KEEP IT REGIONAL

Prime Minister Mia Mottley has challenged Caribbean tourism stakeholders to establish a regional tour agency to not only keep more of the profits here but to be a “shaper” and not just a receiver in the industry.
Lamenting that some hoteliers are losing as much as a quarter of what guests pay for rooms to tour operators overseas, the Barbadian leader insisted on Tuesday that the Caribbean has the capacity to reach potential travellers worldwide and drive business here on its own.
She suggested to the local, regional and international tourism stakeholders attending the opening session of the Caribbean Travel Forum that the region had to exercise the will to do that.
“Nothing should stop you from leaving this country without agreeing to form a major tour operator that is capable of managing our resources and managing flows to the Caribbean immediately,” the Prime Minister said in her keynote address, earning the applause of those gathered in the ballroom at Sandals Royal.
Adamant that the region must not simply be a “taker” of what is offered by international agencies, Mottley said the region must hold its own reins going forward.
“When other cruise lines open up, nobody says that Carnival or Royal can’t get business…. If we as a Caribbean region, the most mature tourism region and the most heavily dependent tourism region in the world, seek to do what China is doing for itself in national strategic security, what the US is doing with the Chips Act, what other countries are doing in Europe to protect their energy security, if this is vital to our lifeblood, how do we allow others to control whether the tap is turned on or off with respect to the flow of people to this region?” she said.
Prime Minister Mottley told the travel forum participants that a national conversation is expected to be held later this month to thrash out issues facing the hospitality industry.
One major challenge is the shortage of hospitality workers post-COVID, as many experienced workers in Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean were simply not returning to their previous jobs.
She suggested that circumstances had changed for many of them since the height of the pandemic.
“You used to work in the hospitality sector but your mother who used to keep the children passed away with COVID and there is no one else to keep them, and when you do the numbers, on the daycare to transport and there are three children you have, it doesn’t make any sense to be working unsociable hours because there is nobody to keep the child.
“If you felt that you weren’t being valued, are you going to risk yourself in something again? I have asked for a national conversation, this month actually, between labour and capital with respect to tourism and hospitality workers,” Mottley said, adding that a wider regional discussion was also needed.