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Mr. Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, Secretary General of Caribbean Tourism Organization analyzes in TravelDailyNews how Caribbean tourism can have a well respected future.
TravelDailyNews:What measures do you undertake in order to secure safety in the region?
Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace: Several things assure safety in the Caribbean region. One is the Association of the Caribbean Commissioners of the Police. For the pack several years their entire theme from their conferences including the one this year is to make certain that the level of safety in the Caribbean region is very high. Their target along with CTO is to secure the number one industry of the region. There are the Dutch countries, Spanish countries, the French countries, American countries, the British territory and the independent countries and all of them are being working with their associated major countries to make certain whatever measures need to be place they are much in place. You will find that the level of knowledge and preparation is much better. There are a lot of seen and unseen measures that are put in place as a result of it.
TravelDailyNews:After the terrorist attacks in the US many Americans turned to more cruising and especially to the Caribbean region. How do you comment that?
V. V-W.: Actually we have a decrease in cruises in our territory. Many inventorial that brought into the region now they redeployed back to other areas. In fact we have seen some fall off in the passengers in the Caribbean. It has nothing to do with the dissatisfaction with the Caribbean but with the fact that they had too much inventory in the Caribbean that they are now bringing them out. What we have done is making certain to all of our members that the experience of the cruises in the Caribbean must be so good that passengers have the chance to feel the taste and to want to come back in the Caribbean islands because tourism is an economic development tool for us and we get a lot more revenue and a lot more benefits when visitors are coming back to the region. There is a whole series that are happening that can really work in the area.
TravelDailyNews:What regions contribute more to your tourism industry?
V. V-W.: The majority of tourists who come to Caribbean are by far from US because it is much closer to the Caribbean. 25% of the visitors coming to Caribbean are from Europe and especially from Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Scandinavia. We have many Brazilians visitors, too.
TravelDailyNews:What are the major problems that Caribbean faces today?
V. V-W.: We don’t see them as major problems. We see them as opportunities and in what fields we can do it better and to benefit from our knowledge to them. The whole area is making certain that the level of services and training is in high standards and meets the international standards. We are trying to create internationally recognized standards and internationally training systems of the Caribbean because there is no doubt that now we have managed to produce much better quality of services and products in relation to the past. The next big issue is the accessibility to the region. I would love to see a few partners to Caribbean to be connected in a long stop basis within two hours wherever you want to go. Is this going to happen very easily? No, but if that is your goal to begin to work with your partners to the other side to make certain that the accessibility is improved dramatically. We are talking to the airline carriers and we are talking to destinations to partnering in bringing in airlift. For example if the plane land to your destination you maybe the principal partner but you also have a partnership with all those persons and to create an air connection with each other. Air connection to the whole region is very important and we try to do our best in order to have a better cooperation with the carriers in that field.
TravelDailyNews:What are your developments in order to attract more business travelers?
V. V-W.: We say that business travelers it’s a nice thing to have. Business travelers are as important to airlines as to destinations. We would love to see more and more business travelers coming to our region. Youth and incentive travel is very important for us and you will see that the expansion that is being made to some islands is expected to be absorbed by incentive trips from Europe. Many large numbers are coming from Europe to the region. And there not coming only for business but many times they continue their trip as leisure travelers because the want to see and taste the region not only as business travelers but as leisure travelers too. For that reason we are trying to create a whole package concept. We are working to the leisure-business package in order to increase more and more every year the business travelers who want to extend their travel in the Caribbean.
TravelDailyNews:World Tourism Organization promotes the idea of the sustainable tourism and poverty alleviation for the destinations. What are CTO’s efforts to that direction?
V. V-W.: We are members of UNWTO and in fact we have just elected to be one of the vice chairs of destinations management council of UNWTO. As far as sustainable tourism is concerned we have specific targets and strategies. Number one is that we have a sustainable tourism conference in April which highlights specifically these issues. The entire first day is dedicated to disaster management and mitigation. To talk about sustainable development without talking about disaster management and prevention is not a serious approach. The second part of it is making sure to have sustainable countries and we are trying to inform our members to consider that cultural preservation of the Caribbean region is what Caribbean is all about. It is the differences of the Caribbean islands that are the big attraction. We don’t want to be as other destinations because then someone will say that I have been to Caribbean I have nothing else to see and we don’t want that. Thirdly, getting the local people to recognize that sustainability is important to them too. They think that sustainability has to do only with tourism and visitors but it is not only that. We are trying to train the local people and to promote the concept of CTO to the local communities. But we have to say that it is much easier for us to let people of the region to know what we want to do because of the small size of the area.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
