#BTColumn – Tourism is a national development strategy

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY. 

by Kareem Yarde

Recent reports which have lauded our tourism rebound so far have caused me to reflect on an avenue I think can magnify tourism’s benefits even further.

While over time we have discussed the importance of linkages between tourism and other sectors, I fear our general progress in this respect is still lacking and needs a more active central government approach.

My ensuing reflections for adjudication are limited to tourism’s role in how we trade with world, and do not address other elements such as environmental/ social concerns.

Tourism as an economic development tool

Since emerging as the lead economic driver in Barbados and many other Caribbean nations, tourism’s prominence has largely been at the expense of other productive sectors.

On November 7th, 2021, about 53 minutes into a recording of Down to Brasstacks among a panel of tourism officials, it was stated: “tourism taking the lead and producing most of the foreign exchange does not stop any other sector from doing well. At the policy level, the question would be, are there other things that need to be done, to assist those other sectors in the way that tourism has been facilitated…

Don’t fight with tourism for that…”.

I wholly agree with the question, but I contend that it is tourism which should be asking this question of itself. Overall, I do not discredit that the panel actively addressed linkages and its developmental importance, but it is my contention that the proffers represent a pervasive
passive approach.

I posit that over time, the impact of tourism on our development has been too inward looking. It has concentrated mostly on the direct role tourism plays in the nation’s development, and less so on tourism’s indirect role in spurring the development of other exports.

Tourism by nature is interdependent. So interdependent is it, that experts are often challenged to measure the true size and contribution of tourism. Furthermore, the generally accepted scholarly stance is that tourism is an amalgam of “industries and activities” and there is in fact no single productive system called ‘tourism’.

Case in point, visitors patronising Oistins is not ‘tourism’ in and of itself, at its core it is instead their participation in the local fare and our culture, which is represented asbeing tourism.

With this in mind, I do not believe development policy, administrative stances, or precepts that pit tourism against other sectors are beneficial, because tourism is in effect, the coalescing of those said industries and activities. Resultingly, there is a guiding mindset that because tourism is so omnipresent, it aims to commercialise a ‘place’ (destination) in its entirety and everything it contains. There is some merit to this very capitalist perspective which should not be immediately discarded as unsustainable.

Doing so blinds us to the impact such commercialisation can have on improving the quality of life of average citizens. For this reason, I contend that tourism has an active role to play in any effort to create aggressive whole of government interventions into national development policy and planning.

In this instance, I focus specifically on international trade and posit an intervention as follows.

The Tourism led Exporting-Development Policy Initiative

Serving under the aegis of the Ministry of Tourism, this initiative would actively incite governmental policy coordination designed solely to propel the integration of tourism with other productive sectors of the economy with proven/ emerging export potential.

The initiative would be tourism centric but outward looking. It would be so critical of the derivatives of its own policy, that it would first be minded to ensure that its interventions aim to prevent the other productive sectors from developing a centralised dependency upon tourism, and rather, eventually stand on their own.

One may ask: Why tourism? What about the Ministry of International Business? What about BIDC? What about export Barbados? What about the Ministries of the respective industries being integrated? The answer: Because tourism itself, is at its core, an aggregation of the economy and society. Such an initiative does not absolve any of the preceding entities from their mandates.

It simply allows tourism to facilitate the cross-selling of Barbados overall. In 2019, Barbados accommodated almost 700,000 land-based visitors alone. This is an easily accessible captive market which tourism has the capacity and dare I say responsibility, to instruct the other productive sectors of the economy on how to effectively capitalise.

This access should be used to develop, refine and make globally competitive, the local goods/ services we provide to tourists while on island for subsequent exporting to the international market. In most instances, these would be specialised niche offerings.

We delude ourselves if we think that tourism is an obscure activity designed for the benefit of visitors. I say instead that tourism is a national development strategy and a medium of trade which we use to access goods and services produced elsewhere, that uplift the quality of life of our people. We must use it for what it is.

Kareem Yarde is young, avid proponent of tourism and air transport’s developmental potential. He can be reached at kareemyarde@gmail.com.