Business View Caribbean | April 2019

23 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN APRIL 2019 board members representing all continents, except Oceania. We have also coordinated with a number of Universities. “Four outcomes we seek in the short term are: Communications – establish an academic journal on disruptions; Crisis Management – create a compendium of best practices, a blueprint to follow; Resilience – establish a resilience barometer to benchmark capabilities, as a guiding position for investors and tourists with regard to safety and security. Finally, to establish an academic chair in resilience and innovation. With these goals, the essence of sustainability is taken to another dimension and we hope to get the full attention of the global community. “What we’re trying to do, in the context of the Caribbean, is to enable it to continue as a leader in tourism and benefit more in terms of economic impact on the average person in the community. Most extractive industries only deal with certain skill sets or provide value to a limited number of people. Tourism, on the other hand, covers every element of human activity because the visitor on arrival brings demand for multiple services and assets for consumption in every sector of the economy. Tourism is the most cross-cutting and potent element for economic growth and development.” BVC: What are the plans to boost tourism in Jamaica, specifically? Minister Bartlett: “Our program to grow tourism is based on five pillars: 1. New products. We’re projecting to have 50,000 rooms in Jamaica by 2025. The immediate program for five years is to increase by 15,000. We are well on our way with the first big wave. Amaterra Hotels are bringing 1,200 rooms; Charisma, 5,000 rooms; Princess Hotels, 2,000 rooms; a proposed expansion of Royalton (a Canadian group), 1,200 rooms; Excellence Group to expand by another 500 rooms. And, we have other companies in discussion now that are about to finalize, including Hard Rock for a possible 1,700 rooms. 2. Food. The second most important aspect of the Jamaican experience is food and we’re going to be spending a lot of time building our food experiences across the tourism network that we’ve established. MINI STRY OF TOUR I SM, JAMA I CA