Caribbean officials commit to cruise tourism initiative

Tourism officials from Grenada and Dominica have pledged their support to the collaborative initiative of the Cruise Alliance of the Southern Caribbean.

They did so during their brief remarks at a press conference held at the closing of Cruise Alliance of the Southern Caribbean Consultation last week Tuesday. This two-day consultation was held at the Hilton Barbados Resort and during it, representatives from 10 Caribbean countries met to discuss ways they could work together to combine their resources and ideas to enhance the Southern Caribbean’s cruise tourism industry.

From left to right: Director Cruise Tourism with the Barbados
Tourism Authority (BTA), Ryan Blackett; President and
Chief Executive Officer with the BTA, Urban Cumberbatch;
Divisional Manager with the Barbados Port, Kenneth Atherley;
Head of Product Development and Customer Service in Grenada,
Nikoyan Roberts; and Chief Executive Officer with the Dominica
Airport & Seaport Authority, Benoit Bardouille.

Addressing persons present, Head of Product Development and Customer Service in Grenada, Nikoyan Roberts, said: “Grenada remains very supportive of this tourism development initiative. It will seek to provide a lot of meaningful benefits to the partner destinations, least of all being our ability to measure and develop our ability to drive additional cruise numbers that are strong in value and that will provide economic returns to our population year round not just in the winter season.”

She continued, “We also see this initiative as being critical to our ability to polish and promote our product. We need to always strive to be overly competitive as we offer products and services, and for cruise business it is no different. We applaud the initiative and we look forward to partnering with Barbados and the other Caribbean destinations to bring this initiative through continuing partnering into reality.”

Echoing similar sentiments, Chief Executive Officer with the Dominica Airport & Seaport Authority, Benoit Bardouille, said his country is “always opened to initiatives that will bring closer Caribbean unity”.

“Dominica stands ready and very committed to the process. We will seek to co-operate [and] bring to bear the resources that we have to be able to help us to speak with a greater voice … as we come together in terms of our development… We don’t see each other so much as competitors. We see ourselves as partners in the business in terms of developing of our various territories based on the area of common interest we have, in terms of looking at increasing our traffic numbers [and] in terms of increasing the overall passenger experience.”(MG)