Chairman of Sandals Resorts International Gordon 'Butch' Stewart.
He attributes this to the region putting in place marketing initiatives and working closely with the respective governments to ensure that the tourism industry is suitably insulated from the fallout.
"The state of Caribbean tourism right now is a mixed bag. I think overall Jamaica has done better than all the islands because we were able to put significant airlift in place and aggressively undertake promotional campaigns," Stewart said in an interview with Caribbean Business Report earlier this week. "Generally we have been able to position ourselves in such a way as to insulate the industry - not perfectly, but just about better than everybody else."
In June this year, Jamaica's tourism minister Edmund Bartlett, in his contribution to the sectoral debate in Parliament, said: "In the first four months of this year, though most of the Caribbean is continuing to have difficulties, of the countries submitting reports to date, Jamaica is one of only three to have recorded growth."
The Caribbean is one of the most tourism-dependent regions in the world. According to statistics from the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB), last year the contribution of travel and tourism to gross domestic product in the Caribbean was estimated to be US$39.9 billion. This represented 14.8 per cent of the Caribbean's total GDP. The contribution of the travel and tourism industry to employment is estimated to be 2,148,000 jobs, which represents 12.9 per cent of total employment in the Caribbean. Looking across the region, real GDP growth for the travel and tourism economy is estimated to be 2.1 per cent in 2008 and 3.3 per cent per annum over the coming 10 years.
By Al Edwards
Friday, September 04, 2009
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