For more than one reason the hurricane season in Caribbean causes some of the sectors that have traditionally been the mainstay of the region’s economy to become afflicted with compulsive attacks of jitters. One of those is agriculture, a sector that is both crucial to food security in the heavily dependent territories as well as an important sector for the reason that it contributes – in some instances significantly – to export earnings.
Serious hurricanes have been known to negatively impact the agriculture sector in some Caribbean territories in the region, as was reportedly the case in Jamaica where, this year as in previous years, the loss of farm produce associated with the country’s fresh fruit and agro-processed products to the United States.
From all reports, these two historically ‘soft’ targets have been spared the worst excesses of Beryl’s tantrums. Not that they have escaped unscathed. Some of the smaller more vulnerable territories in the region were ravaged to the point where their immediate-term ‘survival’ depended on emergency support with food and other amenities from the better-appointed countries in the region, including Guyana.
While in the aftermath of the hurricane the ‘food security bona fides’ of the region became the much more immediate preoccupation, the extent to which the tourism sector was impacted by Beryl was also a matter of particular importance to the region, more particularly to those hurricane-affected territories in the region that are heavily economically dependent on tourism.
Setting aside the impact of hostile weather conditions on air travel flight cancellations the physical effects of hurricanes on the ability of tourist resorts and other facilities to provide the customary services, as has been known, in previous hurricane seasons, suffered severe damage in heavily tourism-dependent countries.
Earlier this week, however, the Caribbean Hotel and Tourist Association (CHTA) issued a statement alluding to the sector’s “extraordinary resilience” in the wake of Hurricane Beryl “with data revealing a rapid rebound in travel bookings.” While the hurricane season in the Caribbean has been known in previous years to spell ‘tough times’ for the tourism industry, the CHTA has trumpeted the region’s “remarkable turnaround, driven particularly by its largest market, the United States.”
According to CHTA, comprehensive air travel days “reveals a swift rebound in tourism, most notably from the United States… the overall trend,” it adds, showing the Caribbean’s impressive ability to “recover and adapt.”
