Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Association Mounts Advocacy Campaign Emphasizing the Industry’s Importance to Region

In his first act as President of the Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Association (CHTA), Josef Forstmayr has launched the Tourism Is Key advocacy campaign underlining the importance of travel and tourism to local Caribbean economies which are more tourism-dependent than any other region in the world.

The CHTA campaign will target a broad audience from Caribbean Heads of State across the region to Caribbean citizens who often do not realize the indirect role tourism plays in their lives every day.

The first official advertisements for the Tourism Is Key campaign and appearing only in Jamaica to begin with –supported by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) and CHTA– will appear in the Jamaica Gleaner and the Jamaica Observer.

The three full page Public Service Announcements, produced by CHTA, are carried by the newspapers as Public Service Announcements (PSAs) illustrating the impact of tourism on the wider economy, the impact of tourism on jobs and the impact of tourism on investment.

“In order to remain viable in the future, we need to ensure the sustainability of our tourism industry today,” said Josef Forstmayr, Managing Director of Round Hill Hotel and Villas in Montego Bay, Jamaica and President of CHTA.

“Paramount to that is a much needed consensus among our leaders and the general public so that travel and tourism will receive the full support it deserves as the Caribbean’s most vital export,” he said, adding:

“Considerable time, effort and funds have been spent to study, review, research, report and make recommendations about various aspects of the Caribbean tourism industry’s policy agenda. Unfortunately, implementation has not been the strongest part of the process.

“We are currently taking steps to improve this through our Strategic Alliance with the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) in which we will have access and support of information that provides greater credibility to the economic importance of the tourism industry and as a major generator of jobs throughout the region.”

The 2004 WTTC Caribbean study, commissioned by the CHTA, says travel and tourism will make an extraordinary contribution to the Caribbean over the next 10 years, but the impact of the industry is generally not understood by public officials, the industry itself, or the communities where it takes place.

“Travel & Tourism is a major economic and social driver in the Caribbean,” said Jean-Claude Baumgarten, President & CEO of WTTC. “It is essential that its value is recognized by governments and the public at large, and that governments help to unlock its full potential for the benefit of all stakeholders in the Caribbean.”

The WTTC urged “long-term planning at both the national and regional levels is a prerequisite for generating investor confidence and organizing the successful development of Travel and Tourism in the Caribbean.”