During the 7th meeting of the OECS Council of Ministers of Tourism which held at the Cabrits Resort and Spa in Kempinski last week, tourism officials in Dominica have made a case for tourism boost in the Caribbean sub-region. Minister for Trade, Ian Douglas, said regional nations must embrace inclusive and sustainable tourism to boost tourism revenue in the OECS region.
Douglas regional Ministers of Tourism must create innovative tourism products that drive economic development. He urged policymakers to join hands to reverse the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry in the OECS. He listed unemployment, job loss, spiked violence, trade restriction, travel ban, and other closures as the consequences of the pandemic in the region.
It calls for rethinking, restrategizing if we are to achieve our regional objectives to achieve balanced growth and drive sustainable economic development. Many of our states in the OECS sub-region are highly tourism-dependent. And the tourism sector is a major source of employment, revenue generation and foreign exchange earnings.
Ian Douglas, Minister for Trade
Minister of Housing, Reginald Austrie, opined that collaborative marketing of tourism destinations in the OECS would be helpful to achieving a common end. He noted that hotel accommodation and safe air access are critical to facilitating tourism revenue, and that the international airport which is underway in Dominica will aid stayover arrivals in the country.
Minister of Tourism and the Chairperson of the OECS Ministers of Tourism, Denise Charles, cited ECCB statistics that 5 million visitors visited the OECS in 2019. She disclosed that the sub-region invested $7 billion into the economic union that year and that 1.3 million stayover visitors visited in 2019; while a total 31.5 million stayover tourists visited the entire Caribbean in that year.
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