CASTRIES, St. Lucia, CMC—The St. Lucia-based Organisation of Jap Caribbean States (OECS) Fee has adopted a unified and collaborative strategy to enhancing and addressing the challenges dealing with the nine-member tourism sector within the subregional grouping.
It mentioned the OECS Tourism Coverage Regional Activity Power, comprising senior public servants and technical officers from the Ministries of Tourism throughout the OECS, had convened a two-day regional session in Antigua and Barbuda to ascertain new guiding ideas and articulate a mission and imaginative and prescient for the event of a brand new OECS customary Tourism Coverage.
OECS Director Normal Dr. Didacus Jules says the up to date coverage will search to develop a completely complete and pragmatic strategy that helps competitiveness, balanced development, higher neighborhood participation, and elevated advantages to native communities as mandated by the Revised Treaty of Basseterre. It would introduce new areas of alternative, particularly throughout the blue financial system.
The chief govt officer of the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority, Colin James, welcomed the initiative’s potential, highlighting the financial challenges of growing tourism and the advantages of a collective strategy:
“Your collective experience will allow you to have interaction in significant discussions and articulate a contemporary imaginative and prescient and mission for our vibrant tourism sector.”
The Regional Activity Power, which had its first assembly in August 2023, reviewed preliminary findings from nationwide stakeholder consultations held during the last 4 months.
The Fee mentioned that the aim is to leverage this momentum to create a Sustainable Tourism Coverage, which, as soon as adopted by the OECS Council of Ministers for Tourism, will direct the OECS Fee’s tourism initiatives and help governments of their tourism improvement over the subsequent 5 years.
The conferences featured a number of working periods, throughout which members envisioned the way forward for a flourishing regional tourism trade and collaborated on crafting a renewed imaginative and prescient.
The Fee mentioned that the World Financial institution helps the initiative by way of its “Unleashing the Blue Financial system Undertaking,” which goals to conduct a radical revision and replace of the OECS Frequent Tourism Coverage (2011), with a specific concentrate on integrating the Blue Financial system to reinforce competitiveness and adapt the coverage for the post-COVID-19 period.
The revised OECS Frequent Tourism Coverage is anticipated to incorporate directives on sustainable tourism improvement and climate-smart and resilience methods to advertise a thriving and extra equitable tourism sector.
Associated
