Basseterre, St.Kitts (Team UNITY Communications):- Unity Movement Leader, Dr the Hon Timothy Harris has made it clear that tourism will be restructured to play a more meaningful role in the socio-economic development of the country.
Speaking on Monday 20th October on Changing Times Programme on Sugar City Rock with host former Tourism, Michael Powell, Dr Harris said that the illegitimate Douglas government had failed the country with its talk about progress in tourism while the reality is otherwise. Dr Harris made a call for the government to outline a Tourism Master Plan for improvement of this critical growth sector.
Dr Harris highlighted evidence in support of his claim that tourism was under performing in St. Kitts and Nevis. He said the failure of the government to maximize the potential of the tourism industry was reflected in the following factual realities:-
1. The Fort Thomas Hotel in which government has significant interest remains closed for years. It remains dilapidated on idyllic property in the prime area of Fortlands. The tragedy about this is that the government took $42 million from SIDF, and invested it in a foreign property and neglected its very own.
2. Most of the hotels had been forced to take rooms from hotel pool and convert them into student dorms. Sugar Bay Hotel has converted 50 percent of its hotel rooms into student dorms, the popular Royal St.Kitts Hotel formerly Jack Tar Hotel is about 80 percent student dorms, and Frigate Bay Beach Hotel has enjoined that programme. Why? We are not getting enough regular tourists to fill our hotels and keep them viable.
Consequently, our hotels are competing with homeowners who rent space to students studying here. The market is being bacchanalized.
3. Statistics from the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank shows that St. Kitts and Nevis over the last 5 years has been struggling to reach 105,000 stay over arrivals. In 2005 and 2006, the tourist industry attracted approximately 140,000 stay overs. In 2011 and 2012, the figure fell to 101, 701 and 104,240 respectively.
In 2005 and 2006 tourist expenditures in the Federation amounted to EC$327 million and EC$355 million respectively. In 2012, we earned EC$256 million from tourism. This represents a significant fall of over EC$100 million lost in tourism receipts.
Stay overs account for over 95 percent of tourist expenditures in most CARICOM jurisdictions. The cruise industry contributes a very small portion of tourist revenues to CARICOM countries. We need then to pay attention to the 95 percent subsector, even while we focus on the 5 percent subsector.
At Marriott today workers are getting 2 to 3 days work. This is reminiscent of the dull season experienced by former workers in sugar industry. Without an appropriate tourism plan, which is well executed, we will continue to retrogress in tourist stay-over arrivals.
This simple truth has eluded the government which has been talking tourism with very little evidence of success, in terms of its contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), to employment, to decent wages, weeks worked by employees.
“UNITY has a plan to grow stay-over arrivals to the Federation, creating jobs and decent wages for our people”, Said Dr Harris on Sugar City Rock programme dubbed Changing Times.
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