Call for Caribbean sustainable tourism action plan

Pictured from left: Terestella Gonzalez Denton, executive director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company (PRTC), Bevan Springer, executive producer of the Counterpart International-produced CMEx conference and Chairman of Counterpart Caribbean, Dr Basil Spri

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, May 16, 2008 - Now is the right time for the islands of the Caribbean to work together to craft a sustainable tourism action plan for the region.

This was the message sent by Terestella Gonzalez Denton, executive director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company (PRTC), as she hosted a Press conference Thursday, the registration day for the 12th Caribbean Media Exchange (CMEx) on Sustainable Tourism conference, which is being held in Puerto Rico for the third consecutive year.

She noted that the Caribbean had made great strides in that area over the last decade or so as islands integrated sustainability into their tourism action plans. According to her, now is the right time for governments and tourism players across the region and experts from the Caribbean diaspora to join together and come up with an overarching plan. 

The Puerto Rican official also pointed out that there was more to sustainable tourism than eco-friendly hotels as she noted that it also involved authorities taking into account, at the policy level, land use issues and the impact tourism infrastructure would have on nearby communities.

The PRTC head said the government of Puerto Rico had taken that step in 2006 to ensure their tourism action plan struck the right balance between economic development and sustainable development when it signed into effect a sustainable tourism policy. She added her government also established an eco-tourism fund that is directly sustained by visitor-spend in that Caribbean territory. 

Chairman of Counterpart Caribbean, Dr Basil Springer, told journalists gathered at the San Juan Holiday Inn that the theme of this year’s conference, “Embracing the Diaspora, Connecting Communities”, was especially targeted to bring Caribbean nationals resident overseas into the sustainable tourism dialogue. He said this CMEx would lay the foundation for an institutional framework to set out how the wealth of resources that exist within the Caribbean diaspora could be used to tackle the region’s tourism issues.

Bevan Springer, executive producer of the Counterpart International-produced CMEx conference, praised Puerto Rico during the press conference as a sustainable tourism model for the region. 

He too pointed out that sustainable tourism was more than just finding a right balance between development and the environment and highlighted that over the next four days the more than 100 conference participants would also be tackling important issues in regional tourism such as marketing and increasing air fares.