52 February 2016 - Business View Caribbean
and profitability of the industry, and recognizing that
it’s the primary employment generator of tax revenue
for the region. That’s not necessarily acknowledged
in practice by many governments in the region, and
we’ve worked hard with our counterpart organization,
the Caribbean Tourism Organization, which represents
government interests in the tourism industry, to pro-
vide information and facts about its economic impact.
We’ve worked closely with the World Travel and Tour-
ism Council and groups like Oxford Economics to gar-
ner and support the development of the necessary re-
search to show the broad economic impact of tourism
in our various jurisdictions in the Caribbean. That’s
been absolutely necessary because we’re faced con-
stantly with issues of high taxation and high costs of
doing business in the Caribbean, which have corre-
sponding effects on our rates and our profitability. We
have to be on top of that all of the time and work hard
to make sure governments are aware of how policies
and regulatory matters affect our industry. So, advo-
cacy plays a very key role in everything that we do. We
operate under seven guiding strategy objectives and
right in there is advocacy and representation.”
You also mentioned research and the dissemination
of information as part of the Association’s mission.
Any recent initiatives in that area?
“We’ve done research and position papers on the lift-
ing of the U.S. embargo on Cuba and offered some
positive and constructive ways in which individual ju-
risdictions in the region can address the impending
changes. We’re finalizing an advocacy paper, right now,
on the sharing economy – groups like Uber and AirBnB
- and how they may be effectively integrated into the
industry with standards, regulations, and some fair
play on taxation, to not only protect the reputation of
the industry, but also to help to develop that subsector
of the accommodations sector, as well.
The Zika virus has been in the news lately and it’s
realistic to think that it will have an impact on travel
and tourism in the region. How has the Association
responded?
We’ve been working for the past four weeks on the
Caribbean National Team - WINNER – Bahamas (left to right):In photo: Emil Lee, CHTA President;
Frank Comito, CHTA CEO; Team Bahamas (Jamal Small, Charon McKenzie, Sheldon Tracey Sweeting,
Richmond Fowler II, Marv Cunningham, Crystal Morley); Peter Olsacher, Judge.
Chef of the Year - WINNER Puerto Rico (left to rig
dent; Jonathan Hernandez, Team Puerto Rico, 2
Judge.
