From right: Chairman of the CTO and Minister of Tourism and International Transport, Richard Sealy, shares a light moment with Prime Minister of St. Lucia, Allen Chastanet; and Minister of District Administration, Tourism and Transport of the Cayman Islands, Moses Kirk Connell, during the official opening ceremony of the State of the Industry Conference last night at the Hilton Barbados.
Minister of Tourism and International Transport, Richard Sealy, received the commemorative Broken Trident during the official opening ceremony of the State of the Industry Conference held at the Hilton Barbados last night.
ANOTHER two billion Barbados dollars will be invested in building up the room stock in the Barbados hotel industry.
So says Minister of Tourism and International Transport, Richard Sealy.
Giving the feature address at the opening of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation’s (CTO) State of the Industry Conference last night, Sealy said that Barbados is hoping to add a further 2 000 rooms to the existing room stock by 2019.
He said that this represents a vote of confidence in the industry.
In the presentation, the Minister spoke about the challenges the Caribbean has gone through and how it has moved from depending on agriculture to the point where it has developed a very desirable tourism product.
Sealy, who is also Chairman of the CTO, said that the region has had to deal with additional competition from other locations. He pointed to “the Pacific, Asia, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa; they have all emerged offering competition to the product we provide”.
“It is therefore, in my opinion, very encouraging that in the face of all of this, the region saw 28.7 million visitors in 2015. That was an increase of seven per cent over 2014,” the Minister said.
“2016 is ahead of 2015 and for the first time we will see 30 million visitors to the region,” he stated, while suggesting that the CTO should take pride in these numbers and feel a sense of achievement.
Also speaking at the opening was the CTO’s Secretary General, Hugh Riley. He said that the state of the Caribbean’s tourism industry is very encouraging, although nowhere close to its full potential. Like Mr. Sealy, he said the Caribbean is on track for another banner year of arrivals.
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