Hugh Riley, Secretary General of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO)

With great expectations pinned on the road ahead and following a 5.4 percent increase in tourist arrivals in 2012, the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) held the 14th edition of the region’s Sustainable Tourism Conference (STC-14) at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Trinidad and Tobago’s Port of Spain. CTO’s Secretary General Hugh Riley sat down with Caribbean News Digital and talked about a number of issues in this exclusive interview.

Q- Much has been said about the effects of the global crisis on the tourism industry. The Caribbean is a very competitive region in global and regional levels. What is your forecast for the medium term?
A- Well, I expect the challenges to continue. The Caribbean’s source markets, largely speaking, the United States and Canada, UK, Europe and to some extent, to some growing extent, South America, are markets are showing recovery for the most part and we expect that our performance will be rewarded with the recovery of the economies in the source markets. That’s fairly normal to expect.

What we have to keep our eye on, though, is to make sure that the growth in Caribbean tourism is ahead of or at very least on pace with worldwide growth. You see, our numbers are growing. We are very proud to say that last year, 2012, we had a 5.4 percent increase in arrivals to the Caribbean from around the world. That meant that we had approximately 25 million stay-over visitors into the Caribbean. That’s a very, very commendable performance for us as a region, but we also have to make sure that as we grow we are staying ahead of the growth worldwide. Our slice of the industry has to continue to get bigger all the time.          

Q- What is your opinion on the APD tax and the rumors that is going to be increased? How does CTO face this tax? Can it be labeled as an attack from the British Government to the Caribbean?
A- Well, the Air Passenger Duty is a tax that the British government has imposed upon passengers traveling anywhere in the world out of a UK airport. The issue that the Caribbean has with the tax is that it discriminates against us. It is unfair to the Caribbean because of the way the tax is measured and applied to the Caribbean.

The category or band in which the UK government has placed the Caribbean is just simply unfair. What makes no sense at all is that the tax is computed on the basis of distance, the distance from the UK capital, which is London, to the closest capital in the Caribbean.

So, that places us according to their logic, in band C. However, the United States, for instance, is placed in band B. So, people traveling from the United Kingdom to the United States are paying a smaller tax than those traveling to the Caribbean.

That logic ignores the fact that there are parts of the United States that are much further away from London than anywhere in the Caribbean. There are parts of the United States, say California or Hawaii, which are much, much further away than to the Caribbean.

This illogic is one of the reasons that we realize that the tax is discriminatory against the Caribbean. There are other issues too, but generally speaking, the tax, which is really quite punishing, is now 83 pounds per person traveling to the Caribbean in Economy and twice that amount in any class above Economy. When you multiply that by a family of four you can see the effect that it’s having on the cost of a Caribbean vacation, and that effect is showing up in a downward trend in tourism arrivals to our countries out of the United Kingdom. So, this tax is hurting, is discriminatory and it ought to be changed.                

Q- CTO does a great job with STC conferences on sustainable Tourism. This is the 14th edition. What have been the main improvements or achievements after the formation of destinations under these terms?
A- You’re right. This is the 14th Sustainable Tourism Conference that we have organized and one of the abiding factors of this conference is the fact that every year it brings back representatives from previous year’s host country to speak about what’s happened in the intervening year, to show how the lessons learned have been applied in some significant ways.

This year we heard last year’s host country, Guyana, come and report on what’s happened in the year since we were there. Next year, Trinidad & Tobago will report in the next STC. That’s one way of always ensuring that the messages aren’t falling on deaf ears.

Another very important thing, which to us means the CTO is encouraging a sign of change, is the growing numbers of the conference. More and more people are getting the message about the importance of sustainability to their lives, to their communities, to their destinations.

Today, for instance, on the final day of the conference, the room is packed. It’s quite a challenge for conference organizers to get people to stay for a conference. When people are staying in such large numbers for a sustainable tourism conference, it tells us that the message is getting through, tells us that people are more and more interested in learning how to preserve the assets that we have today for their children and their grandchildren.

They also have to understand that there is no magic in keeping that right balance between economic growth and preservation of the environment. The magic, if there is such, is in coming and sharing best practices and understanding how to do this right.

The last point I want to make is that people are starting to get the message and I’m very thankful that we are in the forefront of distributing that message, that there is money in responsible travel. More and more of the researches are showing that travelers from around the world are choosing destinations in larger numbers that pay attention to responsible tourism.              

Q- At what point is the much-anticipated interregional multi-destination standing right now? Colombia has already reached out to assess the potential of air rates. Is it the beginning of an expected satisfaction of a hard job well done?
A- We have realized from our research, and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that people who to the Caribbean are destination collectors. They love to move from one part of the Caribbean to another. We see it in all kinds of different ways and one of the things that helps that process is the fact that we are so diverse.

So, within the CTO’s Caribbean there is French, Spanish, Dutch, English and big islands and small islands and some destinations are not islands at all. There is that diversity and people like to experience that.

One of the issues that we have to solve in terms of properly developing multidestination vacations within the Caribbean is the air service. We can’t pretend about this. Some of the air service from one member country of the CTO to another is extremely inconvenient and it’s difficult for people to do that, the island hopping thing, except within the obvious clusters of islands.         

That said, we realize that people who come to the Caribbean sometimes will do one particular destination for their entire eight-day-seven-night stay and, then, the next year they’ll do another. So, the multidestination variety isn’t necessarily to be found in a single-vacation itinerary, but we realize that people are moving around the Caribbean from time to time.

But I take the point very strongly that I think you are making, and that is that we must do all that we can as a region and we’re trying to do that as an organization to make it easier for our own people as well as our visitors to travel around the Caribbean. Until we get that right, we are never going to really feel the full benefit of intra-Caribbean tourism.       

Q- The Caribbean has been historically promoted as a sand-and-beach destination. How must this offer be diversified to face the increasing competition from other destinations?
A- What we do is to try and emphasize whatever assets we have. We’ve got beautiful weather and gorgeous beaches and we’re never going to apologize for that.

However, it is also fairly clear that the whole business of experiential travel is what many more sophisticated and mature travelers are seeking. They like the beach and they like the weather, but they are also interested in the food, in the culture, in the off-the-beaten-track experiences.

This is what we like to talk of as the narrative value of a Caribbean vacation. People want a story to tell. It enriches their lives, it enriches the conversations they have; there is much more of a story beyond the beach. If all that you have to say at the end of a Caribbean vacation when you get back home is that “I went to the beach, it is less of a story,” I think, than to say that “I got involved in understanding something about the indigenous people, I tried this kind of food or that type of drink, I saw this item being made, I went to this particular local community event, I saw drama, I learned to play a steel pan.”

There is an endless variety of experiences that people can have in the Caribbean and we must not be shy as Caribbean people in exposing our visitors to those experiences, letting them sample our food, letting them come in to our homes. This is the essence of hospitality: breaking bread and sharing it with people. That’s, I think, the crux of the matter.

Q- Thank you very much. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A- Just to say that we are extremely grateful whenever we have these events to have you with us, to have the media with us. You are the ones, more than anyone else, that ensure that we are not just talking to ourselves. So, thank you for being here and thank you for helping to spread the story of the Caribbean.