CALL FOR MORE CAREER OPPORTUNITIES – on cruise vessels for citizens

 Citizens from across the region should be able to benefit “career wise” from the cruise industry.

This observation was made recently by Barbados’ Minister of Tourism and International Transport, Richard Sealy, as he gave the welcoming and opening remarks at the opening of the two-day “Cruise Alliance of the Southern Caribbean Consultation” held at the Hilton Hotel in Barbados on Monday.

Barbados’ Minister of Tourism and
International Transport, Richard Sealy.

Regional delegates in attendance at the Cruise Alliance
of the Southern Caribbean Consultation.

Noting that tourism players from across the region, including the French and Dutch Caribbean, will be seeking ways to leverage the assets of the Southern Caribbean to boost the region’s cruise industry, Sealy stressed that going forward, the vision of the Cruise Alliance will not only be limited to marketing and business generation, but will include the creation of a forum for maximising opportunities, by pooling resource and addressing shared concerns.

Sealy then took the opportunity to share two areas of concern he hopes will be addressed in the future.

“Two of the personal areas that I would certainly like to see some improvement in (are as follows), career possibil-ities for our citizens on board the cruise vessels and not necessarily in the line jobs as hewers of the wood and drawers of the water, but also getting into management opportunities. The young cadets from the region should start to be able to chart career paths in the cruise industry. The cruise industry is benefiting tremendously from the Caribbean region and I think the Caribbean people should also get some benefits from a career point of view, in the cruise industry,” Sealy remarked.


“I also think that provisioning is something that we can do a lot more of. We do some of it already … significant home-porting of course here in Barbados, but there is more that we can do in terms of providing goods and sometimes services to these cruise vessels,” the minister asserted.

Sealy stressed that pooling resources and ideas as a result of the Consultation would without a doubt work to complement the national tourism interest of all involved and as such he is expecting excellent results in terms of the input given and the co-operation that will ensue. (RSM)