World Tourism Secretary-General Pledges to Help Strengthen Regional Sector

Secretary-General of United Nations Tourism, Zurab Pololikashvili, has pledged the organisation’s support to strengthen Caribbean tourism and ensure that the people of the region benefit from the sector, including in the area of job creation.

“I promise all Jamaicans and all the Caribbean that we’ll be here talking about how to develop the tourist industry and how to create new jobs,” he said, while addressing the just-concluded Global Tourism Resilience Day Conference at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in St. James.

“We need more money here, more foreign direct investments in the region,” he added.

“We must always remember that our sector gives people a chance to make a living; to earn not just a wage but also dignity and equality. Tourism jobs also empower people and provide a chance to have a stake in their own societies – often for the first time,” Mr. Pololikashvili added.

For his part, Tourism Minister, Hon. Edmund Bartlett, said that tourism is one of the fastest means of transferring wealth from the rich to the poor, noting that “anyone and almost everyone can benefit from tourism activity”.

He said the sector has now become a key driver in building capital across the world.

“The value of tourism is that it is not really extracted. It can be but it is not; it adds value every step of the way and it encourages creativity and innovation,” Minister Bartlett said.

The two-day conference, under the theme ‘Navigating the Future of Tourism Resilience’, was jointly organised by the Ministry of Tourism, UN Tourism (formerly the United Nations World Tourism Organization, UNWTO), and the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC), which is being rebranded as the Global Tourism Resilience Centre (GTRC).