The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) has learnt with great sorrow of the death of Rev. Andrew Hatch, one of the major founders and the first vice-chairman of the Caribbean Tourism Research and Development Centre (CTRC), which merged with the Caribbean Tourism Association in 1989 to form the CTO. Rev. Andrew Hatch was 91.
As the director of the Caribbean Council of Churches in Barbados, Rev. Hatch helped lead the charge for an umbrella agency that would undertake not just the marketing of Caribbean tourism, but also the critical areas of research and human resource development.
Along with some key regional players like Carlos Diago, then deputy director of tourism for Puerto Rico and Peter Morgan, one of the major founders and the first chairman of the CTRC, Rev. Hatch was involved in a series of consultations in 1971 – the best known of which was in Haiti, organised by the CCC – which called for an institution to examine the undoubted economic benefits as well as the social and environmental costs of tourism.
His invaluable contribution to the concept of regionalism and the development of the Caribbean tourism industry will never be forgotten, and his passing is a great loss to the entire region. (CTO)
