By Richard Skerritt

Minister of State for Tourism, Sports & Culture
The Government of St. Kitts & Nevis

The current world economic slowdown and low consumer confidence have already had a significant impact on International Travel and Tourism in 2008, and realistically we can expect that this will continue throughout 2009.

When coupled with the increased cost of goods and services experienced last year, a reduction in availability of investment capital from traditional sources, and the resulting economic challenges, those small nations like mine that depend heavily on travel and tourism as economic generators could easily become overly worried and pessimistic about the future.  But negative thinking is not an option for the travel and tourism industry. Not at this time. Not ever.

We have faced difficult times before and as small Caribbean destinations we must always look to the future with optimism, knowing that, while there will be more turbulence ahead, travel is a very dynamic and resilient industry. This current economic crisis must also be seen as an opportunity for us to strengthen our resolve to achieve excellence in our tourism products.

Research has consistently shown that people around the world still want to travel to destinations that offer a variety of activities and a rich cultural heritage in a clean, safe, caring and attractive setting. People want to get away from the stress of daily living, even if only for a short period of time. This innate desire of travelers to escape from their own environment and to enrich their spirits through the experience of another culture is the basis of international tourism, and that fundamental factor will not change no matter how bad the world economy gets.

But it is also undoubtedly true that the current economic environment means that tourism is now an even more dynamic and globally competitive industry. Travelers are being presented with more leisure options at better prices, and those of us who are responsible for the continuing success of tourism are challenged to work smarter and more closely together for its survival. We need to be watchful but aggressive in the market, to be cost-efficient but customer-focused in our operations, and to be realistic but optimistic in our outlook. We must be prudent during the current slow times but ready for the rebound.

The future of the travel industry will depend largely on the objectives we set today and the quality of the decisions we make in the weeks and months to come. We must therefore not allow ourselves to become too anxious over troubling circumstances, or too fearful of an unpredictable future.

I would point to the advice once offered by Jack Welch, the much-admired former Chief Executive Officer of General Electric. He said: “Trying to define what will happen three to five years out, in specific, qualitative terms, is a futile exercise. The world is moving too fast for that. What should we do instead? First of all, define our vision and our destiny in broad but clear terms. Second, maximize our own productivity. Finally, be organizationally and culturally flexible enough to meet massive change in the market.”

Every country that seeks to attract travelers and develop tourism, and every product owner within each destination, must of course apply this philosophy in its own way and establish and pursue its particular policies.

As an illustration of one strategic approach I would cite the approach to travel promotion that we in St. Kitts and Nevis instituted beginning in 2006, based on research that we gathered and analyzed. What the data confirmed is that the correct measure of success in the travel business should not be the number of tourists that one attracts, but the economic and environmental impact that those tourists have locally. Quite simply, the visitors who can be stimulated to see more, do more and spend more, do more good for the economy. Their larger expenditures have a greater multiplier effect that ripples through virtually every aspect of our people’s lives.

We concluded back then that we should shift the balance of our visitor target market more towards a sophisticated customer with greater spending power and less towards those visitors who are simply looking for a “deal”. To put this most directly, St. Kitts and Nevis is not in the mass tourism business. The “bargains” we offer must be based on value, and not just on price and volume.

Our destination product is therefore increasingly being geared towards providing a quality experience for discerning destination travelers, based on the strength of our God-given and man-made small island assets, including our rich cultural heritage and our genuine, welcoming people. Consistent with this approach, three key policies are highlighted in our government’s tourism strategy:

• Protection of the environment for future generations
• Empowerment of our human resources through entrepreneurial and other career opportunities.
• Efficient targeting of niche markets most suited to our natural attributes

We in St. Kitts are also mindful that we do not operate in isolation, that there is always a regional dimension to our travel and tourism activities. This is to say, because we are located in the Caribbean, we are constantly affected by the reputation that this region has as a travel destination.
It is for this reason that we are working closely with the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) to strengthen regional cooperation. Our collective regional goal is to position the Caribbean as a brand – a name that will convey to potential travelers that we are located in a highly desirable area of the world much in the manner of, say, the Mediterranean or Alaska, but with our own special strengths as a Caribbean region.

Apart from the year round warm weather with which we are blessed, one of the unique features which we share throughout the Caribbean is a rich and vibrant culture which marries interesting historical and cultural elements of four continents, America, Africa, Europe and Asia, with a slightly different residual cultural balance still in existence from country to country and from island to island. Each country and each locale within the Caribbean must develop strategies that promote its individual attributes and attractions.

I would say to my colleagues in the travel and tourism business that ultimately it will be our own creativity, passion and persistence, and our ability to motivate our citizens to be more customer focused, that will see us through the difficult times that lie immediately ahead and towards the far better times for travel and tourism that I am confident are still to come.