Michelle Loubon

Unit­ed States Vir­gin Is­lands gov­er­nor John P de Jongh, Jr, says tourists are the "lifeblood of economies."He not­ed that for the Vir­gin Is­lands, and for so many of our neigh­bours, tourists that come in­to the ports and fill the towns, beach­es and nightspots, were more than just val­ued guests."They are vi­tal to the in­ter­ests and pros­per­i­ty of our peo­ple. Those of us in gov­ern­ment recog­nise this, and we work hard to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment that caters to the needs of tourists, know­ing they chose our is­land to vis­it above many oth­er op­tions."

De Jongh was ad­dress­ing about 60 me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers at a re­cep­tion at Gov­er­nor's House, at Char­lotte Amalie, St Thomas, who were at­tend­ing the Caribbean Me­dia Ex­change (CMEx), on De­cem­ber 1. The con­fer­ence ran un­til De­cem­ber 5.His com­ments tied in with the theme: Com­mu­ni­cat­ing for Clar­i­ty and Pros­per­i­ty.

Speak­ing of the need to tap in­to sus­tain­able tourism, de Jongh said, "But the en­thu­si­asm to pro­vide a great ex­pe­ri­ence and win the loy­al­ty of our guests must be tem­pered by the need to pre­serve and pro­tect these beau­ti­ful is­lands for our peo­ple and for fu­ture vis­i­tors. That means we must work to de­vel­op sus­tain­able en­er­gy sources, im­ple­ment sound en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion poli­cies, and avoid the kind of over de­vel­op­ment that may cre­ate short-term rev­enue, but have a dele­te­ri­ous long-term ef­fect."

He said Caribbean tourism stake­hold­ers should strive to cre­ate and fos­ter a tourism in­dus­try that pos­i­tive­ly im­pacts our is­lands and en­hances the health and well­be­ing of its na­tive peo­ples. "This is a com­plex task in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to so many oth­er chal­leng­ing is­sues, like en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tion, ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture and fi­nan­cial health. This goal we all share will on­ly be achieved through mu­tu­al co-op­er­a­tion.

CMEx pro­vides jour­nal­ists, pub­lic re­la­tions broad­cast­ing and film pro­duc­tion pro­fes­sion­als with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss and pro­vide sug­ges­tions on the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of tourism in the Caribbean arch­i­pel­ago.De Jongh said: "CMEx pro­vides us with a chance to in­tro­duce all of you-pro­fes­sion­als who are deeply root­ed in the af­fairs of this re­gion-to the lat­est re­search in sus­tain­able tourism de­vel­op­ment. This re­search pro­vides a con­tex­tu­al back­drop from which we can dis­cuss top­ics im­por­tant to all of us over the com­ing days: me­dia re­la­tions, so­cial me­dia, cri­sis man­age­ment, air­lift, emerg­ing mar­kets and many oth­ers."

He said CMEx ex­am­ined the com­plex re­la­tion­ships be­tween the me­dia, gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor since the tri­par­tite im­por­tant to every­one. De Jongh added: "Each sec­tor pro­found­ly af­fects all the oth­ers, and as we all work to main­tain our pro­fes­sion­al oblig­a­tions and serve our spe­cif­ic in­ter­ests, we find our­selves fre­quent­ly cross­ing paths with each oth­er. Some­times these di­verse groups ap­pear con­flict­ed and at odds, but, in many ways, that is the in­her­ent bril­liance of our sys­tem. We all push against each oth­er to stand high­er and do a bet­ter job."

As the con­fer­ence wound to a close, US Vir­gin Is­lands' Leona Bryant was the re­cip­i­ent of a World Lead­er­ship Award.Her dossier, de­liv­ered by com­mis­sion­er Bev­er­ly Nichol­son-Doty, not­ed: "She spent more than 25 years mak­ing sure the US Vir­gin Is­lands was a world-class des­ti­na­tion. Her re­cep­tions were leg­endary; her style, grace and pro­fes­sion­al­ism, un­mis­tak­able."