By Sir Ronald Sanders
A new study commissioned by the Caribbean Hotels Association (CHA) has re-emphasised the important role that tourism plays in the economies of many Caribbean countries, and has pointed to opportunities for locally and regionally produced goods and services.
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Sir Ronald Sanders is a business
executive and former Caribbean
diplomat who publishes widely
on small states in the global
community. Reponses to:
ronaldsanders29@hotmail.com |
The study entitled, “The Caribbean Accommodation Sector as a Consumer of Locally Produced Goods and Services and Contributor to Government Revenues” was produced by Tourism Global Inc with funding from the European Union (EU) and the African Caribbean and Pacific Group.
Informed decision-making about tourism by both governments and the private sector in the Caribbean has suffered from insufficient information based on hard evidence.
This is the second study that the CHA has commissioned recently on the Caribbean tourism industry in an effort to guide decisions on the basis of knowledge rather than hunch. An earlier study conducted by the World Travel and Tourism Council in 2004, established the considerable contribution (an average of 65%) that tourism is making to the GDP of the region.
The ten countries covered by the new study are: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominican Republic, Dominica, Jamaica, St Lucia, St. Kitts & Nevis, Trinidad & Tobago and the US Virgin Islands.
It is noteworthy that the US Virgin Islands was sufficiently keen for the study to be conducted that it paid for its own participation.
Guyana, which was invited to participate, declined. The new Minister of Tourism, Mannie Ram Prashad, who appears keen to get the sector moving Guyana, said this was a private sector decision.
The point of the study was to quantify what a sampling of the hotels (small and large) in the 10 countries spends on an annual basis on locally and regionally produced goods and services, and their contribution to the revenues of governments.
Only 54 of the 604 hotels in the ten countries responded. Of these the properties in the USVI and Trinidad and Tobago were reported to be outstanding in their cooperation.
This reticence in providing information indicates two things: the intensely competitive character of the hotel business in the Caribbean, and a lack of appreciation by hotel managers and owners of the value of research and data to their own decision-making. It is an area in which CHA will have to work continuously in the future to educate its members.
In any event despite the fact that only 8.9% of the properties responded, the study concluded that “the sample size overall was sufficiently large to make generalizations with a level of precision of plus or minus 5% at a 95% level of accuracy”.
Some of the findings are as follows:
- 93% of the utilities, i.e., electricity, water and telecommunications purchased by hotels comes from the local economy;
- 84% of services required by the hotel sector are being purchased locally.
- 74% of vegetables used by the hotel sector are produced locally;
- 67% of dairy products are sourced locally;
- 63% of meats are sourced locally;
- the hotel sector provides employment at the average rate of 2.3 employees per room, spending $61.1 per room per day in payroll and related costs in 2005;
- The hotel sector provides direct entrepreneurial opportunities in at least 14 areas identified in the survey e.g. taxi concessions, water sports, spas and beauty salon, gift and craft shops and restaurants.
But, there are areas in which the hotels could do better and which provide opportunities for local and regional businesspeople including fishermen, interior designers and construction firms.
For example in a region whose waters are abundant with fish, only 20% of hotel needs is purchased locally. The share of the local market for fresh fruit and eggs is even worse at 16% and 10% respectively.
The hotels claim that “factors beyond their control influence their ability to procure locally, such as local supply chain elements -e.g. availability, quality, price, reliability, and logistics and convenience, as well as intra-regional shipment issues on a regional scale”.
This points, once again, to the urgent need for a regional transportation policy for the efficient and swift movement of goods within the region, and the opportunity for reliable shipping to fill an obvious void. Equally, there is need for Caribbean countries to develop agricultural production and marketing plans, and to dismantle barriers to the importation of fish, fruit and eggs from regional neighbours.
Were such arrangements in place, Guyana, Dominica, St Vincent, St Lucia and Belize could provide much of the fish, fruit and other agricultural products still being imported by the hotel sector in the region.
The study also revealed that less than one-half (47%) of requirements for light manufacturing is sourced locally even though some items are higher than the average. For example bakery has an 80% share of the market, non-alcoholic beverages 66%, uniforms 60%, and printing and stationery 56%.
Expenditures on construction and fitting out of hotel plant are extremely low with market share at 39% locally and 8% regionally.
CHA should be congratulated for its effort to raise the basis of decision-making about the tourism industry from hunch to research.
Now governments and the private sector should join them in taking advantage of the obvious opportunities to keep more of the tourist dollar in the local and regional economy. |
