Michelle Loubon

Change En­gine Con­sul­tant/Caribbean Busi­ness En­ter­prise Trust Inc Dr Basil Springer says both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ex­pand Caribbean tourism mar­kets. In­ter­viewed af­ter mod­er­at­ing the round ta­ble ses­sions, dur­ing CMEx Me­dia Con­fer­ence 2011 at St Thomas, US Vir­gin Is­lands, Springer said: "The tourism in­dus­try is the largest in the Caribbean. They have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to lead the sys­tem and ex­pand the mar­kets. They have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to as­sist with the re­cov­ery of the economies in the face of the re­cent re­ces­sion." He not­ed the tourism prod­uct could be fur­ther en­hanced via the long stay cruise. Springer added: "It could be en­hanced by the long stay cruise tourism prod­uct and by di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion from the tra­di­tion­al mar­kets in the West­ern Hemi­sphere, the East­ern Seabed of North Amer­i­ca and Great Britain."

Seek BRIC help

He al­so not­ed the BRIC na­tions-Brazil, Rus­sia, In­dia and Chi­na could come on board in pro­mot­ing Caribbean tourism. Springer said the tourism po­ten­tial of the Caribbean was re­ferred to as the "World's Best Kept Se­cret" by peo­ple from the BRIC na­tions. He said: "The BRIC na­tions do not feel the pres­ence of the Caribbean mar­kets even though they have a need to di­ver­si­fy. They need to tap in­to the Caribbean mar­kets."

CMEx tourism in­ter­ven­tions

To date, CMEx has pro­mot­ed tourism by en­cour­ag­ing gov­ern­ments to treat tourism as an ex­port in­dus­try bring­ing in valu­able for­eign ex­change, pro­vid­ed neu­tral plat­form for gov­ern­ment, civ­il so­ci­ety and pri­vate sec­tor to de­lib­er­ate the ben­e­fits of tourism. CMEx has al­so un­der­scored the di­rect ben­e­fit to com­mu­ni­ties of sus­tain­able tourism.