CARIBBEAN TOURISM AUTHORITY - The world welcomes Global Tourism Resilience Day

The world welcomes Global Tourism Resilience Day

At this week’s Global Tourism Resilience Conference, Nicola Madden-Greig, President of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), rubs shoulders with (from left) media veteran Peter Greenberg, Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, and former Prime Minister of Jamaica P.J. Patterson.

The world celebrates Global Tourism Resilience Day for the first time on Friday, February 17.

Proclaimed by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, the special day aims to emphasize the need to foster resilient tourism development to deal with shocks, taking into account the vulnerability of the tourism sector to emergencies.

The international day, a successful development initiative by the Government of Jamaica, is also a call for action for member states to develop national strategies for rehabilitation after disruptions, including through private-public cooperation and the diversification of activities and products.

According to the UN, developing countries, including the least developed countries, small island developing states, countries in Africa and middle-income countries, embrace tourism as a major source of income, foreign currency earnings, tax revenue and employment.

Because tourism often connects people with nature, sustainable tourism has the unique ability to spur environmental responsibility and conservation.

“The use of sustainable and resilient tourism as a tool to foster sustained and inclusive economic growth, social development and financial inclusion, enables the formalization of the informal sector, the promotion of domestic resource mobilization and environmental protection and the eradication of poverty and hunger, including the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and natural resources and the promotion of investment and entrepreneurship in sustainable tourism,” the UN posits.

The first annual Global Tourism Resilience Conference (GTRC)concludes in Kingston on Friday and was described by Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness as providing “a platform for industry leaders, researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders to develop problem-solving tools to build resilience across countries and regions.”

The three-day conference is being attended by ministers of tourism from several countries and other international industry leaders.