The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas is leading a $20-$30 million fund-raising drive to counter negative hurricane publicity and market the 'Caribbean' brand, the Minister of Tourism revealed yesterday.

Dionisio D'Aguilar told Tribune Business that the Bahamas, as the lead country on tourism in the region, made the proposal at this week's CARICOM Heads of Government conference amid fears that the region faces a gradual loss of market share.

Despite the Bahamas and wider region's economic dependence on tourism, the Minister said urgent intervention was required as the Caribbean's global market share was projected to slip from 2.4 per cent now to 1.7 per cent by 2030.

Pointing to the success of national tourism marketing campaigns in the US, Canada and Australia, which all emphasised the brand, Mr D'Aguilar said the Bahamas had called for a collective initiative to finance a similar promotional effort for the Caribbean.

Such a fund, he added, would also be employed to counter the "negative publicity" from hurricanes striking the Caribbean. Many watching the Weather Channel's coverage of Irma and Maria thought that the entire region had been impacted, which deterred travellers from visiting the Bahamas and other countries which were unscathed by the mega storms.

Acknowledging that the Bahamas and other CARICOM members had yet to determine how the funds will be raised, Mr D'Aguilar told Tribune Business: "We made a presentation to try and put forth the idea of raising funds to promote the brand 'Caribbean'.

"Where the funds are coming from is still being worked out, but we're looking to raise $20-$30 million.... We may not get everybody on board, but we're going to try and get it going as best as possible with as many countries as possible. It's always hard to get consensus from a body of 14 members."

Mr D'Aguilar said two previous regional marketing efforts promoting the Caribbean as 'a whole' had "significantly increased the number of visitors to the Bahamas" and wider region in 1992, following Hurricane Andrew, and again in the early 2000s.

Both were isolated events, and the Minister added: "We put funds into marketing the Caribbean, and it significantly impacted the number of visitors coming to the Caribbean from the US. This works. The problem is we've only done it as a one-off. We have shown we can do it, then stop it."

He suggested this went against the region's dependency on tourism as its primary economic growth engine, and called for a further collective drive to counter the fall-out from major hurricanes hitting the region.

Mr D'Aguilar argued that international media coverage frequently gave "the geographically challenged" the impression that the entire region had been damaged, even though only a small number of countries were actually affected, thereby deterring travel to those islands that escaped.

This was the Bahamas' fate in 2017, when its major tourism destinations were largely left unscathed by hurricanes Irma and Maria, and Mr D'Aguilar told Tribune Business: "There's no doubt that we are the most tourism-dependent region on the planet, so when we have a hurricane the effects of that hurricane are magnified by the dependence of our economies on tourism.

"In many instances, the population of the planet are geographically challenged when it comes to the Caribbean. When there is a hurricane in the region, they're confused as to where it's having an effect.

"In the case of Irma and Maria, 70 per cent of the Caribbean was unscathed by that hurricane, but we had enormous or significant cancellations because of this geographic ignorance. People thought it hit the whole Caribbean," Mr D'Aguilar continued.

"What we learned was there was no entity to get the message out on what effects a storm or catastrophe like this is having on our region."

Mr D'Aguilar said the Bahamas and other CARICOM members lacked the "scale" to counter this by themselves, which required that they pool resources on an initiative that was in all their interests.

"What the Bahamas proposed was to create an entity that would raise funds to market the brand 'Caribbean', and to fill the void and not let other people fill that void with the negative message they they did," he further explained.

"What we realised was that as individual islands we simply don't have the scale to raise the funds to counter the negative message, but collectively we do. If we put forth a proposal to market the Caribbean, and keep the brand front and centre with the travelling public, maybe the effect of the hurricanes will not be as great as they were."

Mr D'Aguilar did not say how much each country would contribute to the fund. He added that the impact of 'negative coverage' surrounding the 2017 hurricane season was "hard to quantify", but said he was convinced it did have an effect on tourist arrivals and bookings.

Warning that the 2018 season's start would immediately revive memories of last year, the Minister said the Caribbean's status as the "most tourism-dependent region on the planet" made counter-measures essential.

He pointed out that 13 of the world's 16 most tourism-dependent nations are located in the Caribbean, with the industry contributing more than 35 per cent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) for 10 out of 14 CARICOM members.