PM Mia Mottley Urges Regional Tourism Stakeholders to Rethink Issues Facing the Industry

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has urged regional tourism officials to set the pace regarding the ownership of the Caribbean’s major foreign exchange earner.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley was the keynote speaker at CHTA's 2023 Caribbean Travel Forum. (Photo courtesy of CHTA)“I don’t want hear if the speech good or bad, I want to hear that the hotels of the region have determined that they will not simply in a post-independence era, be a taker of circumstances shaped by others to profit others, but that we shall be shapers of our destiny,” she told delegates attending the 41st Caribbean Travel Marketplace

The Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) is organizing the event that is being held under the theme “Tourism: The key driver of generational wealth for Caribbean nationals.”

Mottley told the Caribbean Travel Forum, featuring discussions on a number of topics that a tourist is not just simply a North American or a European tourist.

“The first tourists are us,” she said, noting “ironically, a hotel that has seen the best of Caribbean capital and ingenuity” created a global brand.

“Will we be shapers or takers? And what do I mean by that? For the most part, this modern incarnation of tourism has been driven by foreign capital, has been driven by foreign airlift, has been driven by foreign markets, has been driven by things that are exogenous effectively to our development.”

Mottley said the region can decide while that is important and certainly represents the foundation upon which the industry has been built “is it sufficient to carry us forward. And if it is not sufficient to carry us forward, at what point do we pause, reset, recalibrate?

“I believe that COVID-19 offered us the opportunity so to be able to do, I believe that a region that has a significant amount of savings that remains underutilized has not yet found a way to appropriately enfranchise its citizens to participate in the very sector that has been responsible for the greatest improvement in quality of life in not only this Caribbean region but across most small island developing states globally.”

Mottley said an examination of the development trends for those nations that are heavily invested in commodities and minerals, “regrettably, the improvements in the quality of lifestyle have not come close to the improvements in the quality of lifestyle that the services sector has brought to most small nations globally.

“And that is perhaps why we have taken comfort in using a model where we are takers and not shape us because the immediate benefits to the average Caribbean person have been far greater than it would otherwise have been if we focus purely on extractive industries dealing with commodities.

“But that has carried us as far as it probably can. How many people cried when you saw the bankruptcy of a foreign tour operator with money’s owed to hotels across the region? How many people continue to cry when the pandemic came, when people who asked you to extend credit to them simply were not paying in time and to be able to allow you to settle your own obligations to bankers, staff and others? “

Mottley said that these things caused many in the industry to pause and rethink, adding “I have seen the shift in tourism marketing to be able to allow for a far more laser-like approach with respect to being able to have persons come to us”.

She insisted that the region must not simply be “taker” of what is offered by international agencies, noting that as the most mature tourism destination in the world, the Caribbean must start to hold its own reins going forward.

“When other cruise lines open up, nobody says that Carnival or Royal can’t get business. So why is there the belief that if we as a Caribbean region, the most mature tourism region and the most heavily dependent tourism region in the world, seeks 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 added.

Mottley said a national conversation is expected to be held later this month to thrash out issues facing the hospitality industry.

She acknowledged that one major challenge is the global shortage affecting the hospitality sector post-COVID, as many experienced workers in the Caribbean are simply not returning to their previous jobs.

“When we look at what happened in COVID, even with the accepted numbers of who died and whose livelihoods were affected, study your head.

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 labor and capital with respect to tourism and hospitality workers,” she said, adding that a wider regional discussion is also needed.