17th July 2003 - Madam Chairperson, Ministers of Government, President of CHA, President of the FCCA, Secretary General of the WTOBC, Your Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps, Distinguished Tourism Colleagues, Ladies and gentlemen, Members of the Press:

    I have the great honour of welcoming you, on behalf of the Caribbean Tourism Organization ,to this seminar on Best Practices in Public/Private Sector Cooperation and Partnerships.

    The importance of this occasion is marked by the presence of many distinguished public and private sector practitioners of the tourism industry and many Caribbean and external high officials who have a known interest in Caribbean integration and development. They are conscious therefore that public/private sector cooperation is critical to the achievement of these objectives.

    But what makes it a truly historic occasion is that the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA) and the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA), which are the major actors in Caribbean tourism and which have often differed in their perspectives of what is good for Caribbean tourism as a whole, are met here in a common cause and with a common objective, in the search for excellence in this the Caribbean’s most important industry.

    I specially welcome the participation of the World Tourism Organization’ Business Council in our deliberations which, I am sure, will lend the necessary objectivity and global breath of vision which such endeavours require. It is our intention, later in the year, to sign a formal Memorandum of Understanding with the WTO so that we can intensify our strategic relationship with that world body which will soon itself be a specialised agency of the United Nations.

    Several of the organizations which are gathered here have had a long history in Caribbean tourism.

    I know there are several views of the importance of history.

    Perhaps the most cynical is that of Ambrose Bierce who describes history as “an account, mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools”.

    I am more inclined to go with those who are of the view that those who pay no attention to history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.

    Fifty-two years ago, the Caribbean Tourist Association (CTA) was established in St. Johns Antigua, and later moved to New York in 1955. The idea was the brain child of the Caribbean Commission, established by the Allied Powers to consult about the security and economic development of the Caribbean in the post Second World War period. It was an idea well ahead of its time.

    The membership of CTA was Caribbean -wide, including 28 English, French, Spanish and Dutch- speaking territories which at the time, were the colonies of Britain, Holland, France and the United States of America. It also included some Central American countries. It embraced both public and private sector entities which were represented on its Board of Directors and even then, had a mandate to market the Caribbean as a single destination.

    Given the history of fragmentation of this region which has often seemed to adopt as its motto “if at first you don’t secede, try, try and try again”, I have often wondered if such a thing as the CTA of the 1950s would have happened, if it had not been created by a Fiat of our colonial masters.

    The first secession began in 1961 when CTA’s hotel committee took a decision to go off on its own to form the Caribbean Hotel Association. The CHA became an autonomous body in 1962.

    In the late 1960s the small islands of the Eastern Caribbean, claimed that CTA was not adequately servicing their needs. Instead however of seeking to put right whatever was wrong or was perceived to be wrong, they followed the established Caribbean solution for dealing with disagreements--- they decided to create yet another institution and established their own tourism agency, called the Eastern Caribbean Tourist Association (ECTA). They however remained members of CTA--- incurring double expenditure and increased overheads, which later proved the undoing of ECTA.

    In 1972, Caribbean academic, religious and development agencies, claiming a general dis-satisfaction with the direction of Caribbean tourism, which they saw as almost totally expatriate- led and focussed entirely on marketing, lobbied for the creation of the Caribbean Tourism Research and Development Centre, with a mandate to transform tourism into a development mould.

    This agency came into being in September 1974 and I had the honour of being its first and only CEO for 15 years until 1989.

    In 1976, in a moment of enlightenment, the leaders of all these four organizations, after meeting in a Working Group for about 6 weeks, had met at Frenchman’s Reef Hotel, USVI, with a plan and a draft constitution to put Humpty-Dumpty together again as one Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO). The Directors of the Boards of the three public sector organizations CTA, CTRC and ECTA agreed to the conditions for the merger, but CHA did not. CTO would have to wait another 13 years to be born.

    The compromise agreement however was that henceforth, the agencies would always meet at the same place and time and that the CEOs of each organization would become exchange Directors on each others Boards.

    By 1988, when ECTA had already ceased to exist because of lack of resources, discussions began again about creating CTO by merging CTA, which had dealt with marketing since 1951 and CTRC which dealt with research and development. Agreement was reached in 1989 and CTO came into being, this time without CHA.

    Interestingly, throughout all these changes and developments, the Cruise Lines remained members, first of CTA, and later of CTO.

    I believe this historical review is important, because it demonstrates that in spite of all that has been said about Caribbean tourism agencies not cooperating with each other, the tourism organizations represented here today, public and private sector, had a single beginning. They have had closer relationships and done more things together, than possibly any similar organizations in any part of the world and if they have quarrelled and disagreed, they have done so as a family. Often the disagreements have been about resources and nearly always have been about marketing. Few people pay any attention to the many things they do quietly together in the areas of human resources, product development and research. Reviewing our history is important also in helping us not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

    The important question which faces us all this morning, now that you know from whence we came, is where are we going.

    The following are our realities as I see them.

1. This seminar and these issues are not only about CTO, CHA and the FCCA. They are about the entire national and regional travel and tourism family, public and private sector; about how they define excellence in tourism development and management, and about how they intend to achieve it together. This regional seminar therefore, is merely a prototype for the public/private sector consultations about best practice and new models which must now take place at the national level.
2. The Caribbean’s dependence on tourism for future socio-economic development is so considerable as to be a matter of serious concern. The quality of life of our communities will largely depend on whether or not Caribbean Tourism is able to compete in a fiercely competitive dynamic global environment. In this the world’s most tourism- dependent region, it is possible that no where else in the world does tourism carry so heavy a burden.
3. Regional and National Tourism organizations and all the other public and private sector players in the industry have an awesome responsibility to deliver solutions in the areas of earning foreign exchange, creating employment and generating government revenue to finance social services. This really is their mandate. All other matters are a secondary agenda.
4. At this time of international economic uncertainty, tourism itself is undergoing cataclysmic changes due to the revolution in information and communications technology, the international negotiations in liberalization of services, the geopolitical developments that impact upon the very nature of travel and the consolidation and other impacts that derive directly from the process of globalization.
5. In the present circumstances many travel and tourism private and public sector entities may have lost their way. Travel agencies are uncertain about their role and many have gone out of business. Airlines, large and small, regional and external, have doubts about their current business models and are swimming in a sea of red ink. The entire private sector, including the hoteliers, is confused by consumer behaviour, which reflects a preoccupation with safety and is caught between the seduction of best price and best practice.
6. National and regional tourism organizations are in danger of becoming obsolete and need to be drastically and quickly modernized to suit a world of travel and tourism that now demands different approaches, different systems and different skills from even 10 years ago in order to function effectively.
7. It is clear that the demarcation of public and private sector roles that existed formerly in tourism no longer applies, and will apply even less as this century grows older. It is even clearer that in this world of globalization and consolidation, fragmentation and duplication is the surest recipe for disaster for the Caribbean. Small has ceased to be beautiful.

    It means that all of us here must be prepared to revisit all that we do with an open mind and be prepared to follow where the logic of change leads us. During this week therefore we must consider new and appropriate models for doing tourism business.

    Perhaps it is time to try once more to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Time to consider creating the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Organization. Perhaps by the end of this week we should be establishing mechanisms to place the several regional programmes of CTO and CHA, and possibly also of the FCCA, under microscopic examination. We should be placing ourselves in a position to see which of them can be merged in the not too distant future and setting up an agenda towards ultimately turning CTO and CHA into CHTO. This would require retaining a highly competent and objective consultancy firm which would hear all the arguments, operate at arms length from each organization and present a final report to the governments and the private sector with one thing in mind....to produce the best possible operational model for achieving excellence in Caribbean tourism.

    What a wonderful gift it would be to the Caribbean, to present to the people of this region in this decade alone, one viable regional carrier, one regional public and private sector tourism organization and one single market and economy!!

    I do not underestimate the difficulties.

    Partnerships, of whatever kind, require trust, transparency about objectives and roles and mutual respect between those seeking to work together. They nearly always require some sacrifice of self. Above all else, they require a sense of hope and optimism.

    I am often surprised that, in spite of having personally experienced the frustrations and disappointments of the West Indies Federation, the Little Eight, the Little Seven, CTRC, and even CTO, I remain eternally optimistic and live in hope that one day we will integrate this region in the best interests of its people. My hope then, is that I will not die in despair.