The re­gion’s tourism chal­lenges have not been cre­at­ed by COVID-19, but have sim­ply been ex­posed and am­pli­fied be­lieves Pro­fes­sor An­drew Spencer, who was re­cent­ly the first per­son to be pro­mot­ed to the po­si­tion of Pro­fes­sor of Tourism at Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Mona.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Spencer who was ap­point­ed on Oc­to­ber 13, ex­plained that the prob­lems be­fore the pan­dem­ic are the prob­lems to­day: cli­mate change, so­cial ex­clu­sion and high leak­age rates.

These, he ad­vised will con­tin­ue with­out re­al struc­tur­al changes.

“The dom­i­nance of sun, sea and sand, multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion ex­ploita­tion and an ac­com­mo­da­tions pre­oc­cu­pa­tion must make space for the emer­gence of forms of or­gan­ic and so­cial­ly in­clu­sive of­fer­ings and ex­pe­ri­ences,” Spencer, cur­rent­ly the Deputy Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor at the Mona School of Busi­ness and Man­age­ment, said.

Most re­cent­ly, Spencer served for four years as the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Tourism Prod­uct De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd, the agency re­spon­si­ble for the main­te­nance, de­vel­op­ment and en­hance­ment of the tourism prod­uct in Ja­maica, and the largest agency in that coun­try’s Min­istry of Tourism.

Ze­ro­ing in on T&T, he said this coun­try’s de­ci­sion not to open its bor­ders for tourism was pru­dent giv­en its low­er de­pen­dence on the in­dus­try.

He ad­vised that a slow and me­thod­i­cal re­open­ing for this coun­try is best and will al­low for prop­er mon­i­tor­ing of the “sto­ries of suc­cess and fail­ure.”

Ac­cord­ing to Spencer, re­sponse rates are im­proved in such an en­vi­ron­ment where tourism num­bers are not large, un­con­trolled and un­con­trol­lable.

“The strengths of To­ba­go ought to be high­light­ed with a clear dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in what is be­ing of­fered in Trinidad out­side of fes­ti­val and events. There are com­mu­ni­ty tourism op­tions avail­able in abun­dance and these must be un­earthed,” Spencer fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he not­ed that coun­tries which have been lead­ing the charge in the re­gion in post-COVID ef­forts ap­pear to be Bar­ba­dos and a few East­ern Caribbean states in terms of man­ag­ing in­fec­tion rates and open­ing up of bor­ders.

Ja­maica, he al­so said, has done well with uptick in ar­rival num­bers but not as well with the man­age­ment of in­fec­tion rates.

“There is a clear dif­fer­ence, how­ev­er, with those rates out­side of the re­silient cor­ri­dors and in­side these man­aged spaces,” Spencer said.

The World Trav­el & Tourism Coun­cil (WTTC) re­cent­ly not­ed that while the Caribbean is re­cov­er­ing faster than oth­er re­gions, this is still be­low its per­for­mance in 2019; a record year for the sec­tor where trav­el and tourism rep­re­sent­ed more than 14 per cent of the re­gion’s GDP con­tribut­ing more than US$ 58 bil­lion to its econ­o­my.

Ja­maica’s re­cov­ery ini­tia­tives

In shar­ing Ja­maica’s re­cov­ery plan, Spencer said the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic on that coun­try’s tourism sec­tor has been sig­nif­i­cant and has giv­en rise to the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ing a com­pre­hen­sive mul­ti-phased ap­proach to cush­ion­ing the im­pact and re-open­ing that coun­try’s bor­ders to vis­i­tors.

As the CEO of the Tourism Prod­uct De­vel­op­ment Agency from 2017 to 2020, Spencer led this process.

He out­lined that the agency en­sured the in­dus­try had ac­cess to en­hanced health and safe­ty stan­dards re­quired to re­open tourism, de­vel­op COVID-19 tourism health and safe­ty pro­to­cols based on bench­marks of near­ly 20 mar­kets in the Caribbean and glob­al­ly.

Ja­maica was one of the first three coun­tries to re­ceive the WTTC Safe trav­el stamp for its mea­sures based on its com­pre­hen­sive­ness.

Fur­ther, Spencer said Ja­maica’s pro­to­cols are be­ing guid­ed by a five-point re­cov­ery strat­e­gy in­clud­ing ro­bust mea­sures that will with­stand lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al scruti­ny, train­ing all sec­tors to man­age pro­to­cols and new be­hav­iour­al pat­terns mov­ing for­ward, strate­gies around COVID se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture (PPEs, masks, in­frared ma­chines, etc), com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets about re­open­ing and a stag­gered ap­proach to re­open­ing/man­ag­ing risk in a struc­tured way.

Fur­ther, Spencer said as a part of the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment’s risk man­age­ment strat­e­gy to re­duce the like­li­hood of trans­mis­sion of the virus be­tween vis­i­tors and Ja­maicans, that coun­try’s Min­istry of Tourism in­sti­tut­ed “Re­silient Cor­ri­dors.”

With­in these “cor­ri­dors” all in­ter­ac­tions are sub­ject to the en­hanced health and safe­ty stan­dards di­rect­ed by Ja­maica’s Min­istry of Health and Well­ness and as set out in the COVID-19 tourism health and safe­ty pro­to­cols.

“All tourism en­ti­ties in op­er­a­tion with­in the cor­ri­dors are re­quired have a COVID-19 re­silient cer­tifi­cate. These cor­ri­dors will pro­tect vis­i­tors with ro­bust pro­to­cols and will en­able more vis­i­tors to safe­ly ex­pe­ri­ence more of the tourism prod­uct than would be avail­able in their ho­tels while en­abling tourism busi­ness­es and work­ers to restart op­er­a­tions in a safe en­vi­ron­ment,” Spencer ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said the num­ber of cor­ri­dors, their ge­o­graph­ic reach, and scope of op­er­a­tions will be ex­pand­ed or con­tract­ed de­pend­ing on the lev­el of risk to both vis­i­tors and Ja­maicans.

Not­ing that a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach is re­quired to en­sure the safe man­age­ment of the “cor­ri­dors” Spencer said key pil­lars in­clude con­trolled vis­its, ad­her­ence to Ja­maica’s Min­istry of Health and Well­ness, Min­istry of Tourism and Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment pro­to­cols and con­trolled group ac­tiv­i­ties.

Are Caribbean coun­tries on

the right path to re­cov­ery?

To Spencer, the paths are quite var­ied yet the sim­i­lar­i­ty is strik­ing.

“The de­vel­op­ment paths of des­ti­na­tions in the re­gion took on an iden­ti­ty of their own, while many of the chal­lenges were the same over many decades,” he ex­plained.

In much the same way, he not­ed, the chal­lenges sur­round­ing bal­anc­ing lives ver­sus liveli­hoods in tourism de­pen­dent states, with very weak health­care sys­tems are not dis­sim­i­lar, how­ev­er ap­proach­es have been var­ied.

He cit­ed that Grena­da for ex­am­ple, re­mained closed with very few cas­es, but even­tu­al­ly had to re­spond to eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.

Mean­while, Ja­maica and the Ba­hamas opened their bor­ders rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly but dealt with spikes which in turn, made it chal­leng­ing to sell tourism be­cause of CDC clas­si­fi­ca­tions, Spencer added.

Bar­ba­dos, on the oth­er hand, he said, took a mea­sured ap­proach to a slow open­ing with sys­tems of track­ing, which had pe­ri­ods of suc­cess

“In the fi­nal analy­sis, no Caribbean des­ti­na­tion is in a po­si­tion that it wish­es to be in. Re­sources are scarce and pri­or­i­ties do not nec­es­sar­i­ly favour tourism, Spencer added, not­ing that the over­all trend in the re­gion is a de­crease in cas­es.

Once again, how­ev­er, Spencer said most coun­tries have ded­i­cat­ed larg­er por­tions of their bud­gets to mar­ket­ing than to prod­uct de­vel­op­ment, which may pro­vide a “band-aid and a short-term high, but which will con­tin­ue to “pro­mote ex­clu­sion and re­sent­ment which are an­ti­thet­i­cal to sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”

Holis­tic tourism ap­proach

Spencer start­ed off at UWI as a Lit­er­a­ture in Eng­lish.

He then trans­ferred af­ter one year to the Fac­ul­ty of So­cial Sci­ences be­fore ven­tur­ing in­to tourism.

A hold­er in a Mas­ters in Tourism and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and a PhD in Tourism Strat­e­gy, Spencer’s per­son­al de­sire for Caribbean tourism de­vel­op­ment en­tails an “at­trac­tions-dri­ven mod­el” that al­lows for re­al com­mu­ni­ty in­volve­ment with the ac­com­mo­da­tions sec­tor be­ing a key sup­port arm.

Fur­ther, he hopes there be a re­gion that em­braces a sec­tor that is “en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive, so­cial­ly in­clu­sive, au­then­tic and owned by its lo­cal peo­ple.”

Ac­cord­ing to Spencer, tourism at its best, should pro­vide dig­ni­fied work to peo­ple who would have made some trade-offs for its de­vel­op­ment.

“Be­ing the first full Pro­fes­sor in the field at UWI makes my fu­ture role ex­cit­ing and daunt­ing all at once,” Spencer ac­knowl­edged.

He added that his job is there­fore, to cham­pi­on all these caus­es through thought lead­er­ship, ad­vo­ca­cy and im­pact­ful re­search projects that will lead to sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment to lives and liveli­hoods.