I wasn’t sure whether to end the headline above with a full-stop, exclamation mark or question sign.
My uncertainty is whether we should ask ourselves whether we’re not watching some among us slowly kill the industry from within or simply swallow hard and exclaim what most would (most likely) not wish to admit, even if true.
Caribbean tourism has grown phenomenally over the past four decades, but it can all come crashing down if early warning signals continue to be ignored, or overlooked.
Here are a few examples…
Last Sunday (November 10, 2024), the popular signature Mickey Mouse cruise liner ‘Disney Magic’ docked on one side of Port Castries, while P&O’s ‘Britannia’ berthed at the other.
Castries bustled as tour buses and tourism taxis were joined by long lines of guided cycling visitors, the island’s up-market and innovative locally-crafted vehicles also on display, an ever-increasing number of non-licensed taxi drivers also located at various strategic roadway points, “hustling for a little trip…”
But while governments and people in more popular destinations proudly bask in the sunshine of always-improving post-COVID Caribbean tourism revival facts and figures, there’s also a dire need for much more attention to how visitors and locals are treated by some stakeholders.
Take how local service providers (at different levels across the region) tend to charge visitors, the latter expected to pay in foreign currency (preferably ‘US dollars’) and to be charged more than the local market value, as if it’s in Caribbean citizens’ DNA to expect every visitor to always have a thick wallet or deep pockets of dry spending cash.
Even with the increasing use of less cash and more (credit or debit) cards by visitors, many local vendors simply refuse to purchase the Point-of-Sale machines their Associations recommend, claiming they “will not see the money” as it “goes straight to the bank…”
It’s like every vendor and taxi driver must quote ‘US-Dollar’ prices (fix their own exchange rates) – and charge locals the local equivalent of the so-called ‘tourist price’.
Some even feel free to not only excessively overcharge visitors but also to arbitrarily raise prices, including coconut vendors who’ll actually charge visitors between US $2.00 and US $ 5.00 per nut and fruit vendors who’ll charge ‘one US dollar’ for a ripe banana.
The average untrained local Caribbean vendors, unauthorized taxi drivers and other itinerant service providers are yet to sufficiently appreciate that today’s visitors aren’t yesteryear’s ‘tourists’ seen as (back then) coming to these islands to splash the cash for sun, sea and sand.
The visitors keep coming and (almost) everyone is smiling, but too many still see ‘tourists’ as cash cows to always be milked dry.
Anyone can point to instances of locals pumping supposedly small doses of cyanide into the industry, which, like mercury, isn’t easy to get-rid-of, unless surgically treated.
Vendors and service providers across the region left outside of or avoiding the training and upgrading scales still think the visitor is the traditional ‘white tourist’ and treat those of African descent with less attention and care about service delivery and quality.
In some cases, local vendors or attendants will rush to end transactions with “people who don’t look like tourists” to tend to those who (supposedly) do.
Questions to be asked and answered also include whether, in many cases, locals prefer to holiday outside the Caribbean because of feeling or experiencing inferior treatment in some places.
An increasing number of Caribbean nationals within the wider region and The Diaspora are today taking cruises and holidaying at prime Caribbean locations where quality and standards are above the usual par.
But industry standards have clearly left the average local Caribbean vendors, unauthorized taxi drivers (and other untrained service providers) too far behind.
Consequently, too many simply don’t appreciate that today’s visitors aren’t yesteryear’s ‘tourists’, seen (back then) as coming to these islands to simply drink ‘Rum-and-Coke’ on a beach.
The visitors keep coming, but too many local operators, big and small, take them for granted and still see and treat them as cash cows to only always be milked dry.
The new and ever-changing regional tourism reality is being discussed at international workshops and conferences where macro plans are suggested or recommended for mega local and regional actions, but at national levels, more needs to be done to widen the training loop.
Customer/Client/Guest service training is usually mandatory across the industry, but there are always those who’ll knowingly or innocently cut corners that also cut local tourism’s nose and spoil its face – and either don’t know or couldn’t care less.
Caribbean Life and Times today definitely requires constant upgrading of populations’ understanding of how changes affect them and how to respond, even if through the introduction of new school curricula (like 21st Century Civics).
Given the industry’s role in regional development, ‘Tourism Literacy’ is a subject I feel Caribbean people need to start learning from school and community levels (in addition to others like ‘How to Handle Money Wisely’, ‘Climate Change’, ‘Independence and Republicanism’ and many others…)
Unfortunately, Caribbean thought processes also include nationals who feel birthright automatically allows them to pluck any tourism chicken or turkey they come across and/or do any and everything they can, to avoid paying related facility fees.
I still baulk at the fact that many tour operators advise visitors to ‘Walk to the beach’ instead of taking a taxi, but when taxi drivers will smartly recommend the furthest beach to maximize their charge, who can quarrel with those advocating they should be required to advertise their prices?
Everyone expects to make the maximum possible profit off every visitor, few even knowing (or caring) that many of today’s visitors are elderlies on a ‘once in a lifetime’ or ‘before I die’ bucket list trip bought by credit, paid up-front, or being taken off their pension payments.
Cyanide is always potent and the supposedly small doses building up in Caribbean tourism requires stakeholders to take quick steps to reverse or prevent the acceleration of the industry’s slow death by suicide.