Over the last few years in­ter­na­tion­al air car­ri­ers have been steadi­ly down-siz­ing their op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean. This era be­gan with the ces­sa­tion of op­er­a­tions by low-cost and char­ter air­lines, which meant the writ­ing on the wall for com­mer­cial car­ri­ers to fol­low soon. For with­out doubt, if the low-cost car­ri­ers could not sus­tain op­er­a­tions to the is­lands, then sure­ly lega­cy car­ri­ers and oth­er com­mer­cial air­lines would find it al­most im­pos­si­ble to do so.

This leads one to won­der on what were the Caribbean gov­ern­ments, tourism min­istries and agen­cies spend­ing mil­lions of US dol­lars. What was the re­turn on in­vest­ment for the tax­pay­ers of these Caribbean coun­tries who have seen a steady over­all de­cline in rev­enue for their busi­ness­es, both vis­i­tor-re­lat­ed and oth­er­wise? But then we can al­ways blame this on the down­turn of the world econ­o­my in gen­er­al.

If we use the re­al ex­cuse of the cur­rent state of the world econ­o­my, should we con­tin­ue to spend mil­lions of dol­lars on trav­el for our tourism rep­re­sen­ta­tives to pro­mote the is­lands, at­tend ex­pos, and ba­si­cal­ly fill the cof­fers of the coun­tries they are in­vit­ed to vis­it on the pre­text of in­creas­ing trav­el to the Caribbean? We can­not ex­pect to con­tin­ue do­ing things the same way and get dif­fer­ent re­sults. How many ex­pos and trade shows can we vis­it be­fore we re­alise our ap­proach is not work­ing?

These mil­lions of wast­ed dol­lars should be spent cre­at­ing a strong re­gion­al tourism plan, re­li­able and sus­tain­able re­gion­al trans­port, sound re­gion­al busi­ness and ex­po­si­tion tourism, and an ef­fec­tive cruise ship tourism plan.

R Chan­dleur

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