New fee suggested for cruise, land visitors

by Marlon Madden

One regional tourism official is recommending that Barbados and other tourism dependent Caribbean states charge cruise and land tourists a “resilience fee” as part of a solution for raising funds to create a more sustainable tourism product.

This was one of several proposals put forward recently during the final in a five-part series of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Future Tourism Regional Dialogue. The theme was Sustainable Solutions.

The St Lucia-based Karolin Troubetzkoy, Executive Director of the Anse Chastanet and Jade Mountain resorts, outlined several measures she said regional tourism destinations could use to enhance their offerings and make them more sustainable.

Warning of the need to avoid duplication of efforts, she called for better information sharing and streamlining of efforts.

Troubetzkoy also recommended the matching of tourism-related projects with funding agencies, more accessible and innovative funding mechanisms, and better utilisation of existing national conservation and tourism enhancement funds.

“There definitely is a need to create sustainable tourism development committees. I see this as a joining of forces between national conservations funds, ministries of tourism, tourism boards and hotel associations, so that we can set the goals and identify together what are the low hanging fruits,” she said.

Pointing to examples of blue or green resilience bonds and debt conversion as some ways to help raise funds and make the sector more resilient, she also called for a “resilience fee” to be charged on visitors to the region, especially cruise visitors.

“If we don’t want to reinvent the wheel let us figure out how we can we take advantage of national conservation funds . . . that are already in existence or other funding bodies such as tourism enhancement funds.

The models of tourism enhancement funds vary from country to country, but the majority of them tackle stay-over visitors and not necessarily cruise visitors,” she said.

“There is no doubt that in the future we should discuss and there should be some sort of resilience fee payable not only by stay-over visitors, but also cruise visitors to the region.

Those of us familiar with the history of Caribbean tourism know how difficult it has been to negotiate with the cruise industry when it comes to fees, but perhaps it took the pandemic to shift that needle,” she said.

The senior hotelier also called for greater use of new and innovative digital payment platforms within the sector.

She also advocated for regional tourism organisations to be given greater support from member states so they could “fulfill their purpose, which is often hindered by a lack of capacity or available finance”.

She told the online gathering that despite being mature tourism destinations, Caribbean islands still had several “big ticket challenges” and hindrances that could easily be tackled through private/public sector collaboration.

She said some of those challenges related to renewable energy and energy efficiency, wastewater management, fresh water management and harvesting, plastic reduction and recycling, waste reduction and food waste reduction and greenhouse gas emission.

She argued that in order to address those challenges, several hindrances must first be dealt with. She pointed to the need for the removal of restrictions on the amount of renewable energy power allowed to be fed into the national grid, and the removal of restrictions on recycling and waste management.

“We are also affected often by the election political cycle of four to five years as this has shown to affect the continuity of progress and process. We have also noticed very often, duplication of efforts where we lose sight at the end of the sustainability tunnel with too many initiatives out there,” she said.

During the session, officials also recommended broad based social, environmental and economic development, the encouragement of informal businesses to become formal, improvement in governance structures and industry standards, and careful planning and monitoring of measures, in an effort to ensure sustainability and competitiveness. marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb