During his opening address to the Caribbean Marketplace held in St. Lucia, Colin Hunte, president of the St. Lucia Tourist and Hotel Association, challenged 1,366 attendees from 20 countries to cooperate more at local and regional levels to maximize opportunities through creativity and inventiveness. He urged the region to tap into its best asset – “its people, those back at home and those abroad”.
A total of 871 suppliers received 298 buyers in St. Lucia for the region’s most important travel booking event, Caribbean Marketplace. Attendance was slightly down from last year, attributed in part to travel buyer consolidations, shortage of flights into St. Lucia and to a lesser extent, the economic crisis.
This was the first time the event was held in the Eastern Caribbean. A 65,000 square foot tent hosted the delegates’ meetings. “The industry has demonstrated the ability to recover,” said Hunt in his comments during the opening ceremony. He said that nearly 900 million people traveled in 2008 and there are expectations that a similar number would do so this year.
The PM Stephenson King of St. Lucia spoke of cautious optimism, while stating that the event represented a “coming of age for St. Lucia.” The challenges were there as the conference was affected by Internet router overload when organizers and Digicel, the local telecom company did not anticipate the high level of demand for the service from the start.
Senator Allen Chastanet spoke of challenges ahead for the region in dealing with consumer and investment confidence, value, taxes, competitiveness, employment, linkages, the exchange rate, and “the Obama factor”. He said that the region is living through times of uncharted waters but more than ever these are times to enhance the environment, community relations and value. “We need to be better leaders, form better relations with the people we work with and focus on improving our cost structures,” he said.
Chastanet says, “More than ever before we need to stop measuring success by percentage change, and measure by what our potential is. Let us prepare for growth when it comes back, so that we may be the first in line,” he stressed.