Jamaica Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett is urging CARICOM to formally acknowledge tourism because the Caribbean’s largest financial driver and undertake a unified regional technique. Talking forward of Caribbean Journey Market, Bartlett known as for coordinated insurance policies, funding frameworks, resilience planning, and stronger regional collaboration to future-proof the tourism trade.
Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett, has issued a sweeping name for the Caribbean Neighborhood (CARICOM) to raise tourism to the middle of the area’s financial and political agenda, warning that the Caribbean can now not afford to deal with its most necessary trade as a secondary concern.
Talking forward of the Caribbean Journey Market in Antigua and Barbuda, Minister Bartlett argued that tourism stays the only largest financial exercise throughout the Caribbean, contributing greater than 40 % of GDP in a number of member states and supporting thousands and thousands of livelihoods all through the area.
“Tourism is just not a secondary consideration — it’s the financial spine of the Caribbean. The time has come for CARICOM to deal with it as such, with the urgency, assets, and political will the sector calls for,” Bartlett stated.
The veteran tourism chief, broadly considered one of many Caribbean’s most influential voices in world journey and tourism, pressured that the trade’s impression extends far past accommodations and resorts. He famous that tourism drives essential sectors together with aviation, agriculture, development, artistic industries, monetary providers, and small enterprise growth.
Based on Bartlett, CARICOM’s regional integration ambitions can’t be absolutely realized except tourism is formally acknowledged because the Caribbean’s principal financial driver.
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The 51st Common Assembly of the Convention of Heads of Authorities of the Caribbean Neighborhood is scheduled for 5-8 July 2026. Keep tuned for extra particulars. The Fiftieth (fiftieth) Common Assembly of the Convention of Heads of Authorities of the Caribbean Neighborhood (CARICOM) convened in St Kitts and Nevis, 24-27 February below the chairmanship of …
“We can’t communicate credibly about financial integration whereas leaving our largest trade to navigate world headwinds alone,” he said. “CARICOM should set up a devoted, high-level tourism mandate — with binding commitments, coordinated insurance policies, and shared funding frameworks — that displays the load the trade carries in each member state.”
The Jamaican minister outlined a number of precedence areas the place coordinated regional motion is urgently wanted. These embrace the event of a complete Regional Tourism Technique, stronger visa and journey facilitation measures, the creation of a Caribbean Tourism Resilience Fund, accelerated digital transformation initiatives, and expanded human capital growth applications.
Bartlett additionally underscored the necessity for Caribbean nations to construct higher possession of tourism’s provide chains in an effort to cut back financial leakage and retain extra income inside regional economies.
“Constructing capability for the area to personal the availability facet of tourism is crucial to making sure much less leakage and extra retention on each greenback earned,” he stated.
He additional argued that the Caribbean’s variety needs to be leveraged as a unified energy below a coordinated CARICOM tourism framework.
“The world’s main locations don’t achieve isolation,” Bartlett noticed. “Our variety is our energy — however provided that we harness it collectively below a CARICOM framework that places tourism on the very prime of our collective agenda.”
Bartlett confirmed that Jamaica will proceed partaking regional counterparts to construct consensus round a broader Caribbean tourism integration agenda, as leaders and trade stakeholders put together to collect for one of many area’s premier journey commerce occasions.
