Byron Blake | Fifty years on: has Caribbean tourism advanced? … a sequel

In The Sunday Gleaner of December 29, 2024, article the question: Fifty years on: Has Caribbean tourism advanced? was raised. Also on the page was the editorial titled, ‘Beyond the hotel strikes’.

Reading editorial and the last article, whatever advances might have occurred, things are back to the 1970s, especially regarding industrial relations, remuneration, and linkages. It captured the situation diplomatically ‘the tourism industry will probably discover that there is nothing inherently antithetical in companies engaging in collective bargaining with trade unions as part of a mature partnership in which the latter pursues fair wages ….’. In just 14 years, it will be 100 years since the industrial riots of 1938, the formation of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union, and the launch of the Peoples National Party. Equally significant is the editorial’s conclusion that ‘converged interests between employers and employees … (should be) part of the stratagem … and exploiting its potential (tourism) for linkages with the rest of the economy’. Recall that it was my focus on the absence of linkages that led to the breakdown of the 1974 CTA Conference. A paper by Edwin Carrington and me was presented at a 1975 Caribbean Tourism Research Centre seminar in The Bahamas developed the concept of linkages in Caribbean tourism. This paper was used as reference material in the Caribbean Hotel Management School in The Bahamas for years.

A call for the promotion of linkages in 2024 speaks volumes, especially with the highly touted ‘linkage council’. John Byles’ tongue-lashing of The Gleaner editorial in his letter on Friday, January 3, will not convert the ‘potential’ into retained earnings in Jamaica – there is a fundamental problem. Significant linkages will not come from the large, externally owned, and managed hotel chains with their global linkages, purchasing, and distribution arrangements which the JTB has been chasing all these years. Significant linkages will come from local, community-based tourism which was at one stage an important part of the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica’s tourism development policy. They can be linked to social and cultural activities including music and sports. The south coast of Jamaica is ideal for such development. It will also come from a well-structured and supported Airbnb sub-sector. In these two sub-sectors, the tourism dollar will not only come into the country but will circulate thereby creating external benefits. It is the external benefits that buy popular support for the industry and drive development.

Linkages and community-based tourism must be resourced (money and people) as central elements of tourism development strategy. Works of visionaries like Diana McIntyre- Pyke must be reinforced substantially, not by public relations pronouncements.

Two other segments of Caribbean tourism deserve scrutiny, namely the cruise and yacht industries.

CRUISE TOURISM

Cruise tourism has been a major part of the Jamaican and Caribbean tourism offerings since the early days when rich white persons would escape the European and North American winters on the ‘banana boats’ and spend time in Caribbean ports. While demeaning, pictures of white tourists on the decks of the ‘imposing’ ships anchored at the foot of King Street or Myrtle Bank to the east throwing coins and black men and boys diving into the sea to retrieve as well as these large number of ‘scantily clad’ white people all over the streets and stores in downtown Kingston are still etched in a decreasing number of memories, if not in libraries and museums. They spent money while using the infrastructure that was in place – no special investments.

The modern cruise industry is very different. As cruise ships have become larger and larger the demand for specialised ports and other facilities, including security, has increased while the interactions and exchanges with the local populations and businesses have decreased. Caribbean and other island States, recognising the potential for pollution of their pristine marine areas from these massive vessels were in the forefront of the international negotiations for regulations to govern the disposal of identified harmful substances and residues.

These were achieved in the IMO brokered negotiations and captured in the MARPOL (The International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships) 1973 and the 1978 protocol. But, with the disproportionate negotiating capacity of the ship – including cruise ship-owning states, the responsibility for providing and maintaining the reception facilities was placed on the port state.

Currently, about 50 per cent of the world cruise fleet operates in the Caribbean in the winter so Caribbean countries boast not only of a large and growing number of cruise ship arrivals but of cruise passengers. But the ships have facilities for gaming, shopping, entertainment, and exercise on board, and actively discourage spending on shore. They have been increasing the commissions on excursions thereby discouraging local tour operators. In the first half of the 1990s CARICOM Heads of Government held two conferences on Tourism. There were talks about how to increase sales from the region to the cruise lines. At each conference, the heads resolved to apply a single per-head tax of US$10 on cruise passengers. Immediately after each Conference the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association pressured and/or induced one or two governments not to implement the agreement – 30 years later neither has been implemented. Currently, there is a patchwork of charges ranging from US$50 in Bermuda, from US$18 in the Dominican Republic. Jamaica and the BVI have now reached US$15. That is lower than airport departure fees. The Caribbean, except for Bermuda, has fallen for the threat that the cruise lines will move their ships from the region and individual states that they will move from their ports without asking ‘Where will they move all those vessels in winter, or where in the Caribbean if all states hold the line’?

Many states are subsidising the cruise sector and with its growing share of the tourism market and the capturing of more of the revenue on board the ships the Caribbean will have to re-strategise.

Jamaica, with the seventh largest natural harbour in the world, has never sought to position itself in the high-value yacht sector although many other Caribbean countries have. We will come back to that discussion.

Ambassador Byron Blake is former deputy permanent representative of Jamaica to the United Nations and former assistant secretary general of CARICOM. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com