The Western Caribbean is synonymous with the large, marquee destinations such as Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Cuba and Belize. But there are petite gems in the region, too, that offer appeal for visitors curious enough to venture beyond the usual island suspects to untrammeled islands. If that sounds like you, check out our five favorite small islands in the Western Caribbean, and then pack a bag. CJ Travel Editor Sarah Greaves-Gabbadon has the full story.

Victoria House in Ambergris Caye.

Ambergris Caye Off the northeast coast of Belize, the outpost that inspired Madonna’s hit “La Isla Bonita” is famous for its beaches and popular with divers drawn to the Mesoamerican reef, just a few minutes offshore. Fishing, snorkeling and jaunts to the nearby even smaller island of Caye Caulker are fun for those not quite brave enough to swim or dive with the sharks in Shark Alley or Esmeralda.

The post 5 Islands to Visit in the Western Caribbean Right Now appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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BY DENNIS CHUNG
CJ Contributor

I recently made the point that the most important asset that Jamaica has is its three million residents, and that it is the underutilization of this asset that has caused us to attain average growth of a mere 0.8 per cent per annum for the past 40 years. The fact is that our three million residents are also our most neglected, abused, and underutilized asset.

One does not have to be a rocket scientist to understand that if you minimize the use of what can give you the greatest value, then obviously your value creation will be minimal.

This can be extended in economic terms to say that an economy that does not focus on its areas of comparative advantage cannot be competitive and cannot optimize its development.

Jamaica, for example, has a comparative advantage in tourism, sports, music, niche agricultural products, and more recently the BPO sector – which is primarily our human resources and geographic location. We have, however, done everything to restrict the development of these by not addressing crime, inadequate resources and planning, by tolerating praedial larceny, and year after year by seeking to “kill” any industry that does well through the imposition of draconian taxes. We therefore create policies to discourage industries from doing well, and then we wonder why we can’t have sustainably high growth levels.

This is the same thing we do with our human resources, as we encourage urban decay by creating disorderly communities; we ignore the productivity of people by allowing uncontrolled noise when people need to sleep; by not respecting the rights of people; by restricting the potential of people through the creation of labour laws that stymie their capacity; and by not insisting on the protection and schooling of children.

The result of this is that Jamaica scores very poorly with respect to innovation, as shown in the

Global Competitiveness Report, when it is well known that economies develop fastest when innovation is encouraged.

A secret that many of our policy makers have never understood over the years – but which our private sector understands very well – is that the best way to build your business is to improve the intellectual capacity of the people who work there.

The most progressive CEOs I know understand this; for example Don Wehby tells me that he is always on the lookout for good talent, even if there is no vacancy, as they will always add more value than their cost. And if he cannot place them within the company, then he puts them on boards. It is therefore no surprise that under his leadership, GraceKennedy has become a much larger global brand and is always improving its profitability.

This importance of intellectual capacity is something our policy makers have never understood. So even while they always seem amazed at the development of a country like Singapore, they don’t understand that one of the things that has led to Singapore’s success is the focus on building human capacity through education and creating an environment for the population to be productive.

The creation of this environment is necessary for improved productivity and human capacity. If we continue to support an environment of disorder, such as road indiscipline and night noise, discourage productivity and improved compensation, through archaic labour laws and mechanisms such as collective bargaining, and discourage investment and value creation with taxes, then we cannot be surprised to see our labour and total productivity factor falling since the 1970s.

Can we further be surprised, as I mentioned last week, that little Antigua has GDP per capita at US$18,300 per annum, while we are just over US$4,000 per annum? Can we be surprised when we have approximately 20 per cent of our people living below the poverty line, unemployment at 13 per cent, and more than 300,000 peopler on welfare (PATH), with another 200,000 in need of welfare?

The only way for us to achieve Vision 2030, and experience real development, is to improve the intellectual capacity of our people.

This means creating an environment that encourages learning and disciplined living. It means educating our people and preparing them for higher value jobs, as it is not just about the quantity of jobs (such as low-paying factory or BPO jobs) but the quality of jobs. The fact also is that industry, such as BPO, is restricted by the intellectual capacity of the human resources available; therefore the BPO sector cannot move readily to high value jobs, such as programming, because we don’t have the skills necessary.

The first step, of course, is that our policy makers need to fully appreciate the need to develop our human resources if we want to see true development.

The EGC’s Call to Action has understood this by focusing firstly on “Citizen Security” as the foundation for growth. The next step, however, is for it to be intertwined with the fabric of our fiscal and other government policies.

This to me is still not evident, as our discussions are still focused around the mathematics of the budget, and who did what when they were in office since independence.

So essentially, our conversations are focused on immediate needs and the distant past. There is very little discussion about the future. If we are to get to Vision 2030 we must change this way of thinking, and we must start to lay out and discuss plans for the future.

We also need to understand that the future of any country depends mainly on the children and those yet unborn. Therefore we need to ensure that focus is placed on improving our education system in terms of access and quality. This does not mean building a school at every corner, but using innovative ways such as distance learning.

The future of our country depends on creating exceptional human resources. This means that our focus must be on creating an environment for our people to realize their full potential. This must not be confused with the politics we have practiced over the years, which consists of giving people handouts. That approach simply brings everyone down to a lower standard instead of helping them to be the best they can be.

This is going to require visionary leadership, which chooses to take action for developing the potential of our people. In other words, leadership must take steps similar to those taken by Jesus when he fed 5,000 people from a basket of fish and loaves, instead of trying to share up the single basket among the 5,000 people.

The post Developing Jamaica’s Intellectual Capacity for Growth appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Coast Guard, US Customs and Border Protection and Puerto Rico Police maritime law enforcement units interdicted and seized a drug smuggling vessel Monday with 1,608 kilograms of cocaine aboard and apprehended four suspected smugglers off the coast of Rio Grande.

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Bahamas-born Sammi Starr, Sony Music recording artist, has announced the launch of “#Bahamas, Your Best Picture Deserves My Best Song,” a grassroots social media campaign aiming to share with the world Sammi’s love his country and the sounds of its Junkanoo festival through his song “Jump in Da Line,” a single produced and remixed by Latin Grammy winner, DJ Buddha.

Sammi Star launched “#Bahamas” on Tuesday, March 28 on his website www.sammistarrmusic.com and on Instagram.

Sammi will search for his favorite photos and videos posted on Instagram with the hashtag #Bahamas and share them back with a soundtrack, his Bahamian Carnival anthem “Jump in Da Line” as well as an invitation to visit his web page.

“When you come to The Bahamas you are surrounded by beauty, music, culture, history and great vibes,” Starr said.. “I find thousands of pictures on Instagram of Bahamians and visitors having the time of their lives here. They inspired me to add my song “Jump in Da Line” as the soundtrack to their most vivid memories as we all celebrate together Junkanoo style through #Bahamas!”

“Jump in Da Line” is inspired by Junkanoo and it describes the Bahamian Junkanoo festival including the groups in formation and lines all moving to the sound of the rhythm.

— Dana Niland, CJ Contributor

The post How Sammi Starr Is Giving a New Soundtrack to Bahamian Travel appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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The head of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association is calling on the region to work together to ensure the Caribbean remains one of the world’s leading destinations.

Delivering the keynote at the Annual General Meeting of the U.S. Virgin Islands Hotel and Tourism Association earlier this month, CHTA President Karolin Troubetzkoy said that while Caribbean destinations are very different, they share many of the same challenges– from the impact of climate change to the high cost of operations.

Troubetzkoy, who is the executive director of operations at St. Lucia’s Anse Chastanet and Jade Mountain resorts, said she believed a collective resolve is needed, leveraging the strength of diversity and the commonalities of the region’s countries and territories to fulfill tourism’s true potential.

She pointed to some of the issues many regional destinations are facing, such as improving intra-regional travel, the high costs of airlift to the region as well as importing food, taxes and the growing activity of the sharing economy.

Troubetzkoy indicated she is encouraged by recent movements towards greater public-private sector collaboration to address the region’s tourism competitiveness and development.

She cited a recent presentation by CHTA and the Caribbean Tourism Organization at the CARICOM Intersessional meeting where the leaders gave the green light to the organizations to draft a plan for submission to the CARICOM Summit in July for a “sustained region-wide tourism development and marketing initiative.”

Quoting from a recent CTO report on the industry’s 2016 tourism performance, Troubetzkoy observed that while the Caribbean reported its seventh consecutive year of growth with an increase of visitor arrivals by 4.2 percent and a total of 29.3 million stay-over visitors to the region, that growth was unevenly distributed, with Cuba and the Dominican Republic being the primary beneficiaries.

Similarly, despite the increase in visitor arrivals, many regional hotel properties did not experience a successful 2016, as measured in terms of key performance indicators such as Occupancy, average daily rate and revenue per available room.

Underscoring the need for integrated regional approaches, Troubetzkoy reminded attendees that the United Nations World Tourism Organization expects the Caribbean region’s tourism share to decline from 2.1 percent to 1.7 percent by 2030.

The CHTA president issued a call to tourism professionals across the region to work together to make their destinations more competitive on the global market: “We also must keep an eye on the many international tourism destinations out there that perform better than us– destinations that have been able to offer 5- and 6-star products at a cost that probably would buy a 3- or 4-star holiday in the Caribbean.”

She called for stronger partnerships between the public and private sectors at the destination and regional levels to tackle the difficult issues of increased airlift, air travel costs, taxation, improved inter-regional connectivity and figuring out together how to price products more competitively in the global marketplace.

“Our discussions may be uncomfortable and sometimes heated but they must take place because, in the end, we are in this together.”

Pointing to the rapid growth of the alternative accommodations sector through online platforms like Airbnb, she asserted, “Rather than fighting the trend we have much to gain by working with [them] to find ways of cooperating for the benefit of our visitors, our dedicated hoteliers and tourism professionals, as well as our hospitable citizens who are willing to share their homes with visitors from abroad, and from within our destinations.”

Key issues related to the sharing economy’s participation in the hospitality industry include the need to ensure safety and security for guests, and to establish policies that require the homestay community to make a reasonable contribution to each destination’s infrastructure maintenance and construction costs.

Noting that people are key to competitiveness, Troubetzkoy urged destinations to develop and fine-tune “every aspect of our customer service experience, enhancing our product itself– whether we are talking about availability of real, authentic Caribbean cultural and culinary offers, locally made products or renovated and enhanced hotel accommodations that have taken into account changing customer expectations.”

None of this can be achieved, she said, without well-trained and informed people in the sector.

“We have to ensure we are training people who will continually improve our product as they make fulfilling careers in tourism, and we need to also provide these stalwarts of our sector with continuing education and training,” she said. “Because, let’s face it – our landscapes, adventures and beaches will draw travelers to our shores – but it is our Caribbean people who will keep them coming back.”

The post Troubetzkoy: People Are Key to Caribbean Tourism Success appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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