EDITORIAL - Opportunity for multi-destination tourism

Two apparently separate yet related events in Jamaica in recent days should boost the optimism of the Golding administration that a revival of the economy may not be far off after 13 consecutive quarters of decline.

But there are questions over whether policy-makers and the private sector, having recognised the opportunities, will invest the will and capital to extract real value.

The first of the events to which we make reference is last week's relaunch by the Trinidad and Tobago state-owned Caribbean Airlines Ltd (CAL) of the Air Jamaica brand, which it 'leased' last year as part of its acquisition of the routes of the bankrupt Jamaican national carrier.

Two things, to us, were especially significant about the CAL-Air Jamaica affair. The first, and perhaps most important, being the shibboleth the new owners have chosen for their expanded operation: Two brands, one Caribbean. The second was the announcement by CAL's chairman, Nicholas George, that Air Jamaica will resume flights to London's Heathrow airport this summer, formerly a loss-making route from which Air Jamaica retreated in 2007.

Business revival

The other event was the Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Association's (CHTA) Caribbean Marketplace, the annual industry fair at the new convention facility as Rose Hall, St James. There were more than 1,300 sellers and buyers of tourism services at the show, making it perhaps the largest CHTA marketplace in recent years.

The large number of delegates, on the back of last year's four per cent growth in stopover arrivals to the Caribbean destinations, suggests, as CHTA President Josef Forstmayr observed, that "business is coming back".

However, this newspaper's columnist Dennis Morrison, who closely tracks global tourism trends, warns that with economic growth in America still sluggish, Europe only slowly emerging from recession, and competition from other hemipsheric tourism markets being aggressive, the English-speaking Caribbean cannot be complacent.

Part of Mr Morrison's proposal, outlined in a column on Sunday, is for the region to get on with the business of multi-destination tourism, beyond the spasmodic approaches of the past.

"Regional tourism development is being held back by policy divisiveness and lack of cohesion," he complains. And there is, too, as Mr Morrison recognises, poor airline links across the region.

Convergence

This brings us to the point of convergence between the events at CHTA marketplace and the pan-Caribbean nature of the CAL-Air Jamaica business model that is implied by their tag line. It enhances the possibility for multi-destination tourism.

CAL now flies between the Eastern Caribbean and Jamaica, and the Eastern Caribbean and London.

So, as CAL and Air Jamaica integrate their systems, it will be possible for English/European tourists to fly from London to Montego Bay via Air Jamaica for a week's stay than via CAL to, say, Barbados or Antigua to complete their vacations. The return to England would be on CAL.

Any such arrangement, obviously, would be based on economic viability and, in Mr Morrision's phrase, overcoming "policy divisiveness and lack of cohesion".

The 2007 Cricket World Cup, when the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) implemented a travel pass and single-destination immigration, provides a template of what is possible.

That matter and tourism generally must be high on the agenda of CARICOM's upcoming inter-cessional summit and the fuller meet of leaders in July.

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