(Jamaica Gleanner) As the Caribbean prepares to reopen borders and rescue battered economies, technocrats from CARICOM member states have been working behind the scenes to craft new protocols for tourists in the COVID-19 era.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness confirmed on Thursday that CARICOM was seeking to arrive at a common position.
Holness, who co-convened a high-level virtual meeting and press conference with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said that the new paradigm “will define the new normal for travel”.
“These protocols probably won’t be much different to what other countries will have, but as a group, I think there is a general understanding of what the future of travel will look like,” Holness said.
The prime minister acknowledged that several countries in the regional bloc have already indicated resumption dates for incoming travellers and stressed that Jamaica was “working assiduously to put in place protocols to have this done as quickly as possible”.
The tourism-dependent Caribbean is expected to struggle to recapture the heady heights of the estimated 25.7 million tourists who travelled to the region in 2018.
Though robust, that represents a fall-off from the 36.6 million the previous year. Jamaica welcomes more than four million tourists annually.
Barbados, Belize, and The Bahamas are among the most tourism-exposed countries in the world.
