Speaking to the Hotel and Tourism Association on Tuesday, 5 May, the Governor, Peter Beckingham, cautioned that, despite the excellent tourism figures and recent award from TripAdvisor, there was still a lot of room to make The Turks and Caicos Islands a sustainable top destination in the Caribbean.
“The TripAdvisor award, and the record tourism figures are above all a tribute to everyone engaged in the tourism industry, from resort owners to cleaning staff. But no one should be under any doubt that the demands on us will get ever harder, and the competition tougher. We need to take a careful look” the Governor said “at both our internal procedures, as well as a number of measures which directly affect visitors. I am well aware that your industry is still not happy with all the workings of the work permit system. I hear too many cases of applications taking too long. I am pleased to hear, following a recent meeting with business, that the Ministry of Border Control still plans to improve the process”.
The Governor also encouraged the tourism industry and Government to be bold in its decision making about alternative energy. “All the energy experts who visit TCI say that we must start to advance the use of alternative sources of energy. If not they say we will quickly get left behind by other Caribbean countries, not to mention the rest of the world, and be in a position where we price ourselves out of the market compared to countries like Aruba, which are way ahead of us in their use of alternative energy”.
Finally the Governor encouraged the tourism industry and the Government to do even more to promote the family islands, and to be more welcoming than we are to visitors. “I am constantly struck” he said “by how seldom visitors get beyond Grace Bay. I can understand that the typical 3-4 day American visitor may not have the urge to travel after arriving in Providenciales. But Grand Turk and the other family islands need to receive a higher profile, and as a result get more visitors than the tiny proportion they receive of stay-over tourists.
I will be interested to see how the Tourism Board proposes to spend its increased budget this year. I also would like to see an even more welcoming approach to visitors at Providenciales airport. They are literally the lifeblood of the prosperity or otherwise of everyone in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The heads of the public service and government departments, as well as the management of the Airport Authority, need to be constantly asking themselves whether there are ways to make the TCI welcome better than it is. There is still some way to go.”
