World Tourism Day to Focus on Sustainability

Jamaica will join the global community to commemorate World Tourism Day, on Saturday, September 27, under the theme: ‘Tourism and Sustainable Transformation’.

Minister of Tourism, Hon. Edmund Bartlett, told JIS News in an interview, that this year’s theme underscores the importance of sustainability in shaping the future of tourism worldwide.

“The focus this year on sustainability and its transformational effect in tourism is apropos as it makes the point that tourism’s power to drive transformation in communities and the lives of cities and peoples all over the world has to have a sustainable and lasting impact,” Minister Bartlett said.

He emphasised that sustainability in tourism is critical and should be supported by public education and community adoption of sustainable practices, adding that it also calls for “supportive institutions and a general enablement of the community to subscribe to the tenets of sustainability.”

Mr. Bartlett further pointed out that for the tourism industry, sustainability means environmental management and protection, economic resilience and sustainability and human capital development.

“These are the three key areas of emphasis as we intellectualise around the subject and as we create thought leadership around some of these areas,” he said.

The Minister noted that Jamaica has been a thought leader, contributing significantly to global understanding, not just of sustainability but of tourism resilience, which he described as “the heart of the ability to be sustainable in the final analysis.”

“We established the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC) here at our University of the West Indies and we now have six satellite centres across the world. Jamaica, small but important in leadership in this critical area of resilience and sustainability,” the Minister said.

The GTRCMC was established in 2018 and is focused on helping tourism stakeholders worldwide prepare for, manage and recover from a crisis.