Caribbean Islands Present Strategies at State of the Industry Conference in St. Martin/St. Marteen

Caribbean Islands Present Strategies at State of the Industry Conference in St. Martin/St. Marteen
By Yndiana Montes & Bill Milligan

Journalists started arriving in St. Martin a couple days before the State of the Industry Conference’s official opening. CTO and St. Martin/St. Marteen wanted to take advantage of the big effort that represents to bring top tourism media to such an event.

Consequently, a Media Day was planned as well as press briefing. This last one took place at an impressive resort, Le Domaine de Lonvilliers (by International famous chef Christopher Leroy). A powerful storm the night before took Internet down. International press had to wait a few hours until the system recovered.

Anyway, lunch was delicious and technical problems were solved. One thing was clear:  Caribbean islands share many issues in touristic and economic terms. That is the message that we’ve got from Ministers and Directors of Tourism who spoke at this special press briefing held in advance of the first edition of this CTO’s conference.

Grenada has embarked on a three year tourism strategic plan following a series of tourism workshops. The territory is experiencing the same problems as everywhere else in the Caribbean, said Peter David of the National Democratic Congress, but arrival numbers had increased as had UK airlift from three carriers. Canada and American airlines had also continued to visit. Cruise arrivals have increased by 12 per cent for the first six months of the year and stay over was up by 9 per cent.

As CND has already informed, a letter of intent has been signed also by Colombia, Venezuela, Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao and Trinidad and Tobago. This may materialize into a flexible ‘one ticket, eight destinations’ scheme where visitors can travel by air, ferry or cruise ship.  Also proposed is a single yachting space to simplify entry of visiting yachts into Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Multi Destination
Dutch St Maarten’s Director of Tourism Maylin Chun has only three month in charge. She explained that there would be a Tourism Authority established in the region, and that multi destination is working fine with Saba and St, Eustatius on the Dutch side, as well as with Anguilla and St. Barth, but not with the ABC Islands as per geographical reasons.  European travelers were more likely to conduct multi-destination trips as the longer haul travelers had a longer stay.

Some of its priorities will be developing airlift through visiting current and possible new companies. Diversifying, said Ms. Chun, was important in a fast-moving economy, and there will be co-operative marketing with the private sector. Americans are still the first market in importance.

One new market was Latin America, which now is connected to St Maarten by Copa Airlines including a direct flight to Panama. The territory further said that it was analyzing closer ties with the French side of the island and inter-Caribbean travel which Ms. Chun noted had great potential. There had also been contact with Russia and Asia’s emerging markets.  

St. Kitts: Surveys and Income
Richard Skerritt is the St. Kitts and Nevis Ministry of Tourism, and in this occasion he addressed the media as this, and not as the Chairman of the Caribbean Tourism Organization. As a good politician he started praising St Martin’s diversity of cultures and said that was a reason for choosing the location for the conference.

“St Kitts and Nevis had a long history of trade with Anguilla and St. Martin, with a lot of movement of people between the islands for recreation and trade”.  Minister Skerritt, always kind with the press, appointed that visitor arrivals had gone up but stayover was not yet back to 2008 levels.

Air services were dependent on visitors filling seats and the nature of the business meant an inevitable drop in the off-peak months. However, St. Kitts has managed to expand its services with Air Canada and American Eagle both coming.

Cruise visitation had seen consecutive growth for the past five years, with 650,000 projected between October 2011 and September 2012. The new pier at Port Zante is now able to accept Oasis-class ships, with Allure of the Seas due to call from 30th December, 2011. The key is to have a great volume of those, so stores and tourism related establishments can see revenue.

Finally, there are several new resorts in development plus a private airport on the table. Development on the island is boosted, said Mr. Skerritt, by the territory’s Citizenship by Investment program, which after due diligence enables individuals who invest a minimum of $350,000 into approved projects to become citizens.

Martinique, a sweet but very informative presentation
Muriel Wiltord, Director for the Americas for Martinique Tourism Authority, said that the Island had numerous flights from France plus the United States and Canada. She said was everybody in The Caribbean has experienced, that air connections needed to be resolved; travelling was often done through Miami which made it difficult (we had to overnight in Miami in order to make it for this conference).

Regional airlines could be pushed more because Caribbean people liked to travel a lot and take short vacations to neighboring islands. The strength of the French West Indies, including St. Martin and Guadeloupe, was the historic ties to the mother country (definitively you can feel the French beat not only in the music, but shopping and in the table. French cosmetics and other products can be found everywhere and those are much more expensive or inexistent in America and the rest of The Caribbean).

French people take long vacations up to three weeks which might enable visits between islands, she explained, but being the economics in Europe as the way they are, the Islands are looking for more tourism from emerging markets, the American and specially South America. Her presentation was fresh and candid, and journalists like it very much.

Last but not least…
The issue of aviation must be tackled head-on, according to the Chairman of the Caribbean Tourism Organization, Ricky Skerritt: “Airline ticket costs had jumped since 9/11 particularly in terms of security. Smaller countries with economies of scale issues still needed the same facilities as any international destination and because of this the per-passenger costs go up with added tax. This is passed on to airport users, therefore the fewer people who use the airport, the higher the proportional increase has been.

Some airlines have withdrawn or decreased flights but the running costs of an airport remain the same, said Mr. Skerritt.

“We need to get creative and remove or reduce taxes for intra-regional travel to incentivize and encourage the market,” he said, “But the job of a Minister of Tourism is to get people to come to your territory, not send them somewhere else, so it’s a bit of a Catch-22.”

However, it would be better if ministers could see the Caribbean as one destination, if the mindset could be that intra-island travel was valuable and costs came down.

Budget airline Red Jet had driven down costs but whether they had come down past the point of viability, only time would tell, he warned.

“Some serious decisions need to be made about taxes. They should relate to goods and services provided to travelers, not outside services or to fund the lifestyle of a nation. Air Passenger Duty and other outrageously high taxes have taken this beyond the point of ridiculousness,” he concluded.