David Jessop

Once again a wholly foreseeable and well- documented crisis looms and Caribbean ministers are left scrambling to achieve the impossible: to try turning around a decision by the United States Congress that will decimate tourist arrivals by air into 14 Caribbean nations, starting in three months.

On October 4, U.S. president George W. Bush signed into law a bill that contains the provisions necessary for it to protect its borders. In outline, this requires all U.S. citizens returning to the U.S. by air from a Caribbean destination after January 8, 2007, to have a valid passport.

The bill effectively discriminates in favour of cruise ships and the destinations of Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, Mexico and Canada, as they are exempted until June 1, 2009.

The decision, which will take effect just as the high season is in full swing, will impact on some countries more than others. Under present legislation, U.S. citizens have been able to travel as tourists on a driver's licence or birth certificate to a number of nations, including The Bahamas, Jamaica, Aruba, the Dominican Republic and Cayman. In theory, they can continue to do so, but under the new legislation they will not as of early January next year, be able to re-enter the U.S. by air without a valid passport.

The U.S. market accounts for 51 per cent of the region's total tourism market share but in some of the most affected countries where 'travel documents' other than passports are acceptable, this rises to 86 per cent in the case of The Bahamas, 73 per cent for Jamaica, and 80 per cent for Cayman.

Letters sent as recently as June to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff from the tourism industry sought an extension to January 2009 in order to carry out a public information campaign in the U.S.

The same letters suggested that the potential job losses from the new legislation could amount to 188,300 and visitor revenue losses to US$2.6 billion.

STUDIES AND REPORTS

The figures come from studies and reports undertaken in mid-2005 by the internationally- respected World Travel and Tourism Council for the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA) and the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO). They note that at present, some 80 per cent of visitors to Jamaica do not use a passport, while in other nations such as St. Vincent, The Bahamas and Antigua, the figures are 50 per cent, 30 per cent and 25 per cent respectively.

To understand the seriousness of the new U.S. legislation, it is necessary to know that the cost of four U.S. passports for a family would be US$400 and the wait to obtain a U.S. passport averages four to six weeks. In practical terms, this means that any U.S. citizen without a U.S. passport considering a Caribbean vacation this winter is likely to either go to a U.S.-linked Caribbean destination, choose a cruise, or visit Mexico. Moreover, it is likely that a significant part of impulse travel from the U.S. to the Caribbean will cease.

What all of this means is that the Caribbean is facing a crisis that the CTO director general Vincent Vanderpool Wallace, has described as similar to a Category Six hurricane.

As this is being written governments and industry are considering how best to react but there are already some very clear messages in what has happened.

The first is that it may well not be possible for land-based tourism and some governments to coexist peacefully with the cruise companies despite recent attempts at rapprochement. According to senior sources, the land-based industry in the Caribbean and some Governments had been receiving assurances from the cruise industry and its powerful Washington lobby that they would argue for equal treatment for air and cruise-based tourism arrivals.

However, what in reality has happened is, that, under pressure, U.S. legislators have given the cruise industry an extraordinary two and a half year commercial advantage in a number of the region's key destinations.

CONTINUING PERCEPTION

Secondly, and despite a continuing perception that some in the industry are only interested in their narrow concerns, its representative organisations have behaved with responsibility and prescience, commissioning studies, lobbying and informing governments on the implications of the issue for more than a year.

The third is that the industry's concerns still find little resonance with politicians and officials who at the drop of a hat will defend other industries that make a significantly lower contribution to the region's wealth. This is despite the fact that tourism and the global defence of its interests have become of strategic importance to the region.

And the final lesson of the passport debacle is that governments, officials and diplomats have to understand that those who lobby hardest and create like-minded coalitions in Washington and Brussels invariably win.

Away from the immediate crisis, tourism industry leaders are now regularly visiting Brussels and other European capitals to engage with Caribbean diplomats, Commission officials, the European Parliament and member-state representatives on policy issues relating to tourism.

Both CHA and CTO are developing further programmes of this kind but these are yet to be matched at a governmental level.

Most importantly, CTO and CHA have come together in a European context to produce draft language and a detailed justification as to why an annex and legally-binding language on tourism should be contained in an economic partnership agreement with Europe.

This ground-breaking piece of work which is being considered by trade negotiators before being submitted to ministers for subsequent negotiation with Europe, suggests an industry that is now aware that it has a central role to play in almost every aspect of Caribbean development and policy.

Despite this and tourism's multi-functionality, the region's economic dependence on this industry has yet to appear on the policy radar of many government ministers. Tourism still does not warrant a separate agenda item at heads of government meetings and is rarely mentioned in high-level international encounters.

Peter Odle, CHA president, describes tourism as the lifeline of the Caribbean spanning the depth and breadth of national economies and employment. If the decision last week in Washington is any guide to the future, this message has yet to be fully understood.

David Jessop is director of the Caribbean Council. Email: david.jessop@caribbean-council.org.