Sun, Sand and Sanity
Berthia Parle, president of Caribbean Hotel Association, is taking no excuses from those in the industry who still blame the September 11 terrorist attacks for their limp balance sheets. She also believes that our tourism industry has shifted from profitability to survival. "Business has never been so unusual," said Parle, speaking at the breakfast meeting of the Trinidad Hotels, Restaurants and Tourism Association. She explained that it was now necessary for the industry and those involved in it to adapt, readjust, think outside the box and be creative in an attempt to survive the changing times and face the new tourism trends. "The reality is that the ground rules of business have changed forever," said Parle. "Existing global players are consolidating their position, causing us to wake up, redefine our goals and reinvent ourselves." She criticised those who used previous unfortunate events to explain their current inefficiencies, saying that "enough water had flowed under the 9/11 bridge" to cause the industry pundits to examine where global tourism currently stood and how the Caribbean fit into that picture. Despite this criticism, however, Parle did admit that the events of the last five years had, in fact, dealt the industry quite a blow. She confessed that some countries had been hit hard and that a few were continuing to feel after-effects . "Some of us are yet to recover fully from the economic shock suffered by the industry from 9/11, SARS, other terrorist activities, the war in Iraq and now, very high fuel prices," lamented Parle. "In fact, over the last few years, our industry seems to have cycled around everything including new ferocious, destructive tropical storms and hurricanes." Together with these disastrous events, Parle pointed out other occurrences that she believed had prompted the economic decline. Among them were the significant loss of charter air services from the UK to unprecedented significant gains in scheduled lift from the USA in particular, as well as the openings, re-openings and refurbishment of world-class hotels and painful closures and near closures of struggling small properties. She blasted mega-tour operators, who, she said, continued to receive hefty sums of money in advertising from our national budgets and yet refuse to feature small properties in the Caribbean. "It is hard time that we start playing hardball with these big players," she told guests. Then, Parle took on the issue of crime and its impact on the industry. She lamented the growing levels of crime in the region, warning that the seriousness of the situation could completely destroy all the gains the industry had made. The fact of the matter, she said, is that crime is at all time high and spiralling out of control. Parle did offer possible solutions though. She said that at a national level, the Caribbean countries needed what she called a "two-pronged integrated response." This, she said involved both the public and private sectors of the individual governments and that hotels and other tourism companies should be more focused on honing competitive advantage at the individual level as well as at the industry level. At the regional level, she said there must be much closer functional co-operation amongst private companies and much closer collaboration between regional, public and private sector bodies. Parle chastised the Caribbean governments, stressing that they needed to sharpen their focus on enhancing the enabling environment for firms and destinations to become more competitive, and for economies to find ways to maximise the growth and development potential of tourism. With respect to the management of the industry as a whole, Parle said that it required dedicated men and women who were passionate and committed to raising the bar, pushing the envelope and driving the process of change. She said, " While we in the Caribbean have always promoted the region for its laid back atmosphere, we cannot afford the luxury of a laid back mentality." She explained that the difficult times that the industry was currently facing called for a new mind-set, new way of doing business and exploring all the options. In closing, Parle emphasised the need for the Caribbean islands to unite. She said, " It is my strongly held conviction that however different our cultures, however wide our horizons and however clear our vision, we simply have to, and must pool our resources to work together to create for our industry the best possible framework for the genuine viability in an increasingly globally competitive tourism arena. She told guests that the Caribbean hospitality industry was endowed with the creativity and potential to innovate but it needed to "accelerate our stride into the future."
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"Sun, Sand and Sanity"