PM HOLNESS CONFRONTS TRAVEL INDUSTRY TO SEIZE PROSPECTS INNATE OUT OF COVID

BY AKANKSHA DEAN 

The Global Tourism Resilience Forum held in Dubai at Expo 2020 in the DP Pavilion was an exceptional paradigm of ‘taking the bull by its horns’. Minister of Tourism for Jamaica and the Co-Chair of the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC), Honourable Edmund Bartlett lead the affair.

 
The Most Admirable Andrew Holness, Prime Minister of Jamaica conveyed an influential and solicitous opening dialogue explaining the importance of awareness and resilience. “The recovery of the global tourism industry is a serious component of the overall pace of economic revival but particularly for the most tourism reliant regions of the world”. He continued, “the pandemic has fetched a gamble for shareholders to network more closely, to identify best practices, stratagems and modernisation that will endorse the recovery and build overall resilience for the future.”
 

Orators from the civic and private divisions pencilled on their experiences to share with the international spectators of travel and finance specialists. Minister Bartlett’s mission is to ensure the industry is distributing through action and deeds and he made that copiously clear. 
 
Four premeditated actions were publicised, the inauguration of a campaign to name February 17 as internationally accepted, Global Tourism Resilience Day. It is an enterprise that will take a year in the making but has already commenced with the provision of the United Nations and key trade associations across the globe. Thus, adding to global cognizance of the travel and tourism industry but drawing emphasis to preparedness and resilience undertakings. The second action was the declaration of the ambitious development plans of the GTRCMC. Two agreements were endorsed with Canada and Bulgaria and a third was endorsed in Jordan on the 20th of February to institute remote Centres.
 
The third deed was the revelation of a book published on resilience entitled, “Tourism Resilience and Recovery for Global Sustainability and Development” which is an alliance of PhD and graduate students with the forward by former UNWTO Secretary General, Dr. Taleb Rifai and edited by Professor Lloyd Waller, Executive Director of the GTRCMC and Minister Bartlett. And finally, not the least of which is Minister’s vision to generate a global tourism fund from where destinations or industry participants with inadequate resources can draw support in the case of disruption. An assembly of actions that are as great in scale as the accomplishments ahead. The spokespersons of the forum restated those disruptions will be ongoing so industry retorts must be idealistic and persistent to meet the challenges.
 

“Before the endemic, no one talked about resilience – sustainability was the chief subject. We have counterfeit ahead through these perilous actions of expansion, thought leadership, publication and Global Tourism Resilience Day,” concluded Minister Bartlett. But with a smile and an eye of more to come, he beamed at the audience thinking of “the formation of an international fund, global multi-national sustenance and subsidy movements, new tool expansion, technical novelties, dealings and publications. We will endeavour to affect the lives and livelihoods of millions for the better.”