Tourism Minister starts job ‘up to challenge’

On her first day on the job, new Minister of Tourism and International Transport Lisa Cummins declared she is undaunted by the challenges facing tourism during its worst-ever crisis.

Cummins told journalists she was eager to not only confront those challenges, but to find solutions.

She said: “As you know we are now in a space where tourism has pretty much ground to a halt, international travel has ground to a halt, and we are dealing with in some cases all around the world, the collapse of several economies that are tourism dependent and so this is an interesting and perhaps most challenging time to take up the portfolio of tourism, but it’s perhaps also the most exciting time to be able to do that.”

She said it was not the first time she was placed in such a situation, recalling when as a young foreign service officer she was transferred to Washington DC, shortly after the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

“So I am looking forward to take up the challenge of tourism. I am confident there is a strong team in the various agencies that fall under the Ministry of Tourism and also obviously the direction of the Government of Barbados as led by Prime Minister Mottley has made it very clear that Barbados has to go in a new direction,” she said. “We’ve seen that with the Welcome Stamp and we’ve seen it with some of the other initiatives.

“We will have an opportunity to retool, retrain, refashion, upscale, reposition, restrategize and create new tactical approaches so that by the time international travel gets going again, Barbados we’re hoping, along with the exceptional team here at the Ministry and those who will come on board and add voice and perspective to this issue, that Barbados will emerge in a space that we could not have anticipated as a result of the challenging time that forced us to be at our most innovative.”

Cummins said one of her first objectives as Minister would be to look at tourism in its entirety and seek to incorporate all Barbadians into the tourism product.

Said the Tourism Minister: “From a cruise perspective I know many of the players, but tourism as we know it is much broader than that and I think that’s going to be one of the key challenges that I intend to tackle first. Looking at tourism in all its aspects; cruise, long stay, and then looking at some of the areas that have been critical for a very long time.

“One of the other things we also want to make sure is that we include Barbados.

“When we think of tourism a lot of times the conversation oftentimes is narrowly focused on certain persons and certain players who are in the sector. We want to make sure that everyone understands that they have a stake, they have a role and they are meant to be beneficiaries of the tourism sector.”