New safety standards for tourism industry

Operators in the tourism industry in Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean will soon have several health, safety and environmental standards by which they can choose to operate to ensure a safer operation for their workers and guests from viruses and other health and safety issues.

During a brief ceremony on Thursday, representatives of the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) signed a letter of agreement with officials from the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards (CROSQ), paving the way for the introduction of the hospitality health, safety and environmental standards, which forms the second phase of the Regional Tourism and Health programme.

Chief Executive Officer of CROSQ Deryck Omar said the new standards put the region, which is heavily dependent on tourism, in a position to better conform to international best practices “in the way we approach tourism surveillance in our region”.

“If there is one thing these seven standards are sure to do is to give us the means in the region to help fight back against the adverse effects of the COVID pandemic on the tourism sector, and regain our market share with sustainability as a primary factor,” said Omar.

The standards, which are to be issued in the coming months, provide international best practice in seven areas – food and safety sanitation, water treatment management and efficiency, sewage treatment and management, solid waste management, energy management and efficiency, integrated test management, and environmental management system – all for the tourism industry.

Omar said the set of standards should be welcomed by all CARICOM member states, adding that it was especially critical for those who depend on the tourism industry for their main source of foreign exchange earnings.

Pointing to what he said was a rigorous process in developing the standards, Omar said CROSQ was “already planning to explore the feasibility of utilising these standards at the member states level and in a harmonised way”.

After about two years of being developed, the standards were approved by the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) in November 2020.

While implementation of the standards is not compulsory, officials said they had the potential to be adapted by countries and made mandatory by way of law.

In the meantime, CARPHA will be encouraging organisations to implement the standards through its multi-tiered Healthier, Safer Tourism (HST) health assurance and recognition award for tourism programme.

Dr Lisa Indar, Director of Surveillance Disease Prevention and Control at CARPHA, said this segment of the Regional Tourism and Health programme was critical given the vulnerability of the region’s tourism industry to health, food, safety and environmental sanitation threats.

The letter of agreement, which was signed on Thursday, sets out the responsibilities and framework by which CARPHA and CROSQ have agreed to work and function under phase two of the Regional Tourism and Health programme, which began in 2014.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) funded project is designed to address health safety and environmental sanitation threats to tourism, with the aim of strengthening the capacity of organisations and countries to prepare for and respond to public health threats.