The tourism and journey trade has been the dominant sector of the Caribbean financial system for many years, and a driver of financial progress and improvement.[1]
However, the Caribbean Area has witnessed first-hand the detrimental and far-reaching penalties of infectious illness outbreaks, as demonstrated by COVID-19 with its stringent ‘lock-down’ measures that severely impacted the livelihoods of our Caribbean individuals. Different challenges confronted by the Area embrace interconnected and porous borders, small, under-resourced populations, various surveillance, laboratory and human useful resource capacities, in addition to susceptibility to climatic change and disasters resulting in elevated transmission of meals, water and vector-borne illnesses.
The aforementioned reiterate the vital want for mechanisms that permit for resilient and sustainable Caribbean tourism, resulting in a extra steady financial surroundings within the Area.
Underneath the theme of “Tourism and Peace” for World Tourism Day 2024, celebrated on September 27 yearly, the United Nations World Tourism Group (UNWTO) has illustrated that tourism can remodel communities – creating jobs, fostering inclusion and strengthening native economies, while selling financial interdependence between neighbours, encouraging cooperation and peaceable improvement.[2] The UNWTO, on World Tourism Day 2024, requires travelling responsibly, constructing bridges, and selling mutual respect amongst cultures and nations, harnessing the ability of tourism to advance peace and prosperity for all.2
The Caribbean continues to be a premier vacationer vacation spot, recording roughly 32.2 million guests in 2023, about 4 million greater than in 2022.[3] The Caribbean Public Well being Company (CARPHA) and its Regional Tourism and Well being Programme (THP) stands in solidarity with the UNWTO and different worldwide and regional tourism stakeholders, together with the Caribbean Tourism Group, and the Caribbean Resort & Tourism Affiliation, in commemoration of World Tourism Day 2024.
Dr. Lisa Indar, Advert Interim Govt Director, CARPHA and Head of the THP, states, “With the Caribbean’s heavy reliance on the journey and tourism trade, we have to be aware of the Area’s publicity and vulnerability to infectious illness and pandemic dangers and the need for well being to be intertwined into Caribbean tourism to advertise sustainable tourism, sustainable economies, social and financial well-being.”
CARPHA’s THP is a multifaceted program, the primary of its sort, which continues to pioneer work for enhancing sustainable Caribbean tourism and well being safety, while partaking and collaborating with CARPHA Member States. The THP adopts a multisectoral method for enhancing the resilience of the tourism trade and by extension, the well being sector of every collaborating nation by means of surveillance, response, tips, capability constructing, requirements, coverage, advocacy and partnerships, and a travellers’ well being award and app. The THP strengthens regional and nationwide well being methods and enhances the well being of customer and resident populations by searching for to handle the well being, security, and environmental sanitation threats to tourism.
CARPHA urges its Member States to advocate for the continued implementation of the THP for more healthy, safer tourism and to additional help the sustainability and resiliency of Caribbean economies.
