Having regard to the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and its global impact on the well-being of the Caribbean and the institutions that sustain the economies of the region, the Caribbean Public Health Agency’s (CARPHA) primary focus for much of this year has been on reducing the economic impact which the pandemic has had on the tourism-dependent countries of the region.
One such measure has been to seek to help revitalise the globally debilitated tourism sector through the implementation of safety and health measures that will bring a measure of assurance to both nationals of the respective countries as well as visitors. This, in order to boost visitor arrivals to those Caribbean territories whose economies are almost entirely dependent on visitor arrivals and have already been hard hit by the ravages of the pandemic.
In pursuit of this objective, the CARPHA earlier this month, announced the release of its Travellers’ Health Programme (THP) which borrows from the best practices embodied in the respective health and safety standards and practices in the region in order to provide a comprehensive monitoring and response system to public health issues currently impacting the tourism industry. One of the keys to the effectiveness of the THP mechanism, the report says, is its “early warning and response system.”
With the procedures embodied in the THP now in place, the international travel news network, Travel Daily News, reported earlier this week that regional tourism is now ‘steaming past” other global destinations to restore travel to its customary place in Caribbean economies.
This initiative is reflective of a mindfulness on the part of the Caribbean tourism industry that it not surrender the price of place that it has held as one of the world’s most sought out destinations. In the face of the ongoing threat that the pandemic continues to pose, Travel Daily News has reported the development by CARPHA of a Caribbean Travellers Health Mobile App and a Travellers Health Assurance Stamp, “all aimed at building travellers’ assurance and resilience as well as to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and other public health threats to both residents and visitors.”
For all this, statistics made public on the likely overall economic loss to the Caribbean resulting from the impact of COVID-19 on tourism-dependent countries still raises critical questions about how quickly the economies of the affected countries can recover. Estimates regarding the likely reduction in the contribution of travel and tourism to the region’s Gross Domestic Product this year project losses of up to US$US44 billion in a worst- case scenario. In a best-case scenario, the losses in the tourism GDP of the region could amount to US$27 billion. These figures represent a bitter pill to swallow for a collection of small Caribbean territories already continually vulnerable to threats posed by changing weather patterns that bring devastating storms and hurricanes which, at their worst, can inflict no less damage than is threatened by the persistence of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
