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Capacity to Recover Swiftly Crucial to Tourism Resilience in the Caribbean, says Bartlett

Release Date: 
Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - 18:30

NEW YORK, New York; June 06, 2018:  Tourism Minister, Hon. Edmund Bartlett says the Caribbean needs to look at resilience in the advent of global disruptions such as natural disasters in a new way to ensure recovery and sustainability of the tourism sector.

Speaking at the second annual City Nation Place Americas conference yesterday, Minister Bartlett said, “In the Caribbean we recognize that hurricanes will come but if we haven’t built the capacity to withstand hurricanes and global disruptions such as pandemics, epidemics, cybercrimes and terrorism, there can be no sustainable development in our area.  The conference is being held in New York under the theme ‘Place branding in a crisis: lessons on rebuilding after Hurricane Irma’.

“Resilience therefore means building the capacity to anticipate what will be happening by tracking these disruptions, managing the process when they arrive, and recovering not just in real time, but in Nano time, so as to ensure the stability of the region.”

With the increase in global disruptions and a need to respond effectively and recover swiftly, Minister Bartlett highlighted a need for a mechanism to coordinate these responses on a timely basis. The establishment therefore of a Global Centre for Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management is a direct response to this need. Minister Bartlett said, “The Caribbean will be leading the way with global resilience and capacity building, as the first ever Global Centre for Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management will be housed at the U.W.I, Mona in Jamaica.

“The Centre, which should be launched by January 2019 during Caribbean Market Place and the Global Conference on Small and Medium Sized Tourism Enterprises in Montego Bay, Jamaica, will play an important role in terms of research, monitoring and evaluation as well as training and capacity building, and will help us to respond better each time to these disruptions.”

City Nation Place Americas is the forum for place branding and place marketing for nations, regions, states and cities across the USA, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. 

While in New York Minister Bartlett will also participate in the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s (CTO) annual Caribbean Week in New York, which will include a CTO Council of Tourism Ministers and Commissioners meeting and the Caribbean Diaspora Forum.