Strategies for the quick recovery of Caribbean economies from the devastation wrought by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will be discussed by regional and global stakeholders at a virtual forum on Friday.
The event is being hosted by the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), the Barbados-based Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), and the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC).
It will be held under the theme ‘Tourism: The Key to the Caribbean’s Economic Recovery’ and will bring together public and private sector leaders, the international tourism development community, members of civil society and the media to identify lessons learned from the pandemic and to address how the highly tourism-dependent region can harness the economic power of tourism to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and revitalise the region’s economies.
Among the panellists will be the Barbados tourism minister and CTO chairman, Lisa Cummins, Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Ed Bartlett, who is also the co-chair of GTRCMC; the CHTA’s chief executive officer and director general, Frank Comito, as well as Michel Julian, senior programme officer with the World Tourism Organization.
“A key goal of the forum is assessing tourism’s impact on Caribbean economies and identifying joint actions which can facilitate tourism’s recovery and strengthen the region’s economies.
“ The forum will draw upon the thinking of the participating organisations as well as the desire of many Caribbean heads of government as expressed recently at a Caricom meeting for the region to take a collaborative and comprehensive approach to stimulating and accelerating tourism’s recovery,” the organisers said in a statement.
They said during the online forum, participants will examine the resilience of the sector and how the Caribbean’s dependence on tourism for economic stimulation will increase in the post-COVID future as tourism is likely to bounce back sooner and faster than other segments of the economy.