Caribbean workshop on managing sites and attractions held in Barbados

The Caribbean is coming to grips with the realities of the changing preferences of visitors, Jean Holder, secretary general of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) said at the opening in Bridgetown, Barbados, of a regional training workshop on Managing Sites and Attractions.

"The Caribbean has for too long relied largely on things like its sea and sand, all lovely products but not enough to capture attention and the enthusiasm of people who are looking for experiences in a changing world," Mr. Holder told the participants gathered at CTO headquarters in Bridgetown, Barbados, for the four-day workshop ending on Friday 28th.

"This (workshop) marks a very important step in coming to grips with some of the realities of consumer preference.

"What the visitors talk about when they visit a destination are the service that they experienced, the people that they met, the beauty of the country, and the things that they did, and this is truer today than it ever has been," he said.

Mr. Holder said that CTO had placed a great deal of emphasis on human resource development because the regional organization saw the need for small states to develop the skills and knowledge of their people in order to remain competitive in the global environment.

"The Caribbean has always been competitive in music and athletics and sometimes our world reputation for these things obscures the fact that in many areas of the world our intellectual and academic superiority places Caribbean people well ahead of a lot of people that we interact with," stated the CTO secretary general.

Some fifteen participants from Anguilla, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago are attending the March 25 to 28 workshop organised by CTO through its human resource division. The programme includes the examination of techniques and strategies on every aspect of managing a tourism site or attraction.

Field visits are also part of the learning experience where participants will have an opportunity to evaluate major attractions.