The Caribbean peo­ple who lead the pro­mo­tion of tourism in their coun­tries have pulled their cold-weath­er coats and jack­ets out of their clos­ets and head­ed to Lon­don. World Trav­el Mar­ket, from No­vem­ber 4 to 6, is in Dock­lands, the mod­ernised and smartened-up old docks and ship­yards of east Lon­don.

It’s chilly in ear­ly No­vem­ber, but the Caribbean posse brings the heat with cre­ative booths and spir­it­ed af­ter par­ties out­side the ex­po cen­tre. The Bar­ba­dos dis­play blows every­one else’s out of the wa­ter–slick, pro­fes­sion­al and with great ad­vo­cates, sur­ro­gates and PR pitch­men. An­tigua and Bar­bu­da usu­al­ly wheels out the great Sir Vi­vian Richards.

Away from the Caribbean clus­ter, it be­comes clear how fierce the com­pe­ti­tion is. The Mid­dle East is an in­creas­ing­ly com­pelling al­ter­na­tive. Thai­land, Sri Lan­ka, and some of the is­lands of the Pa­cif­ic of­fer stun­ning prod­ucts.

De­spite an all-round bounce back from the ham­mer blow of COVID-19, the Caribbean re­mains in a dog­fight to keep mar­ket share, as choice ex­plodes and dis­pos­able in­comes shrink in the tar­get mar­kets. Our slice of the glob­al pie is 2.4 per cent–34.2 mil­lion of 1.4 bil­lion tourists. The re­gion is get­ting squeezed at every price point … from back­pack­er/B&B to the high-end golf­ing crowd that flocks to the west coast of Bar­ba­dos. Trinidad and To­ba­go is look­ing to po­si­tion To­ba­go more firm­ly in the tourism space through talks with San­dals.

Here’s what the Caribbean, be­ing a zone of peace, is re­al­ly about. If bombs start falling, trav­el ad­vi­sories start drop­ping. The falloff in tourist ar­rivals would be sig­nif­i­cant and would se­vere­ly dam­age the small is­lands’ economies. Be­sides Grena­da’s, St Vin­cent’s, Bar­ba­dos’s and St Lu­cia’s, that would in­clude To­ba­go’s.

For some small is­land economies, tourism is as much as 90 per cent of GDP. The av­er­age is much low­er–11.4 cent ac­cord­ing to the World Bank–but the spread is wide. In An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, rev­enue from for­eign vis­i­tors ac­counts for 55 per cent. Bar­ba­dos, clos­er to the zone of cur­rent dis­rup­tion, at­tracts close to half a mil­lion vis­i­tors and al­most a bil­lion USD in rev­enue.

The Prime Min­is­ter of T&T Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is a smart politi­cian, and she’s like­ly aware of the po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic cost of hos­til­i­ties in our neigh­bour­hood. Her rhetoric has lacked sen­si­tiv­i­ty to­wards these con­cerns. She should re­mem­ber that sup­port for South­ern Caribbean mil­i­tarism is al­so an act of self-harm.

T&T is di­rect­ly af­fect­ed–not on­ly through To­ba­go, whose eco­nom­ic pro­file mir­rors that of most Caribbean is­lands, but al­so through trade. T&T’s Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism said in 2023 that this coun­try’s food and bev­er­age sec­tor alone ex­port­ed US$462 mil­lion in to­tal. Ex­ports of all kinds to Bar­ba­dos amount­ed to US$183 mil­lion. To mis­quote John Donne, no is­land is an is­land.

In de­clin­ing to add T&T’s name to Cari­com’s most re­cent zone of peace state­ment, there was no need to dou­ble down and diss Cari­com with a state­ment on their state­ment. The opt-out al­ready sig­nalled clear­ly where T&T stood.

And yet, there’s some truth in the T&T PM’s as­ser­tion that the re­gion is any­thing but a zone of peace. Da­ta from the UN Of­fice on Drugs and Crime (UN­ODC), most re­cent­ly up­dat­ed in No­vem­ber last year, list­ed six Caribbean coun­tries–in­clud­ing T&T–among the 10 worst for mur­ders per capi­ta. I’m not even in­clud­ing Haiti, vir­tu­al­ly a war zone. Turks and Caicos, at the top of UN­ODC’s list, record­ed 35 mur­ders com­pared to Nige­ria’s 44,000, but it’s about im­pact. Five mur­ders in St Vin­cent res­onate more than 500 in South Africa, which had a mur­der count of 27,000. A dozen or so low-key civ­il wars have long been rag­ing in our Caribbean so­ci­eties.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been the on­ly Cari­com leader to di­rect­ly and un­am­bigu­ous­ly call out Venezuela’s ag­gres­sive moves to­wards an­nex­ing most of Guyana. That has been a re­fresh­ing change from Cari­com’s too-cau­tious both-sides-ing of a sit­u­a­tion in which there is one bel­liger­ent.

All that said, don’t write off a pos­si­ble deal be­tween Venezuela and T&T. One, if Cara­cas wants the Drag­on gas field to be com­mer­cial­ly ex­ploit­ed, the T&T fa­cil­i­ty 18 miles away re­mains its sound­est bet. Two, judg­ing from the noise com­ing from Re­pub­li­can sen­a­tors in the loop about Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s plans, that de­ci­sion may soon not be Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s to make.