Jamaica Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett is urging CARICOM to formally recognize tourism as the Caribbean’s largest economic driver and adopt a unified regional strategy. Speaking ahead of Caribbean Travel Marketplace, Bartlett called for coordinated policies, investment frameworks, resilience planning, and stronger regional collaboration to future-proof the tourism industry.
Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism, Edmund Bartlett, has issued a sweeping call for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to elevate tourism to the center of the region’s economic and political agenda, warning that the Caribbean can no longer afford to treat its most important industry as a secondary concern.
Speaking ahead of the Caribbean Travel Marketplace in Antigua and Barbuda, Minister Bartlett argued that tourism remains the single largest economic activity across the Caribbean, contributing more than 40 percent of GDP in several member states and supporting millions of livelihoods throughout the region.
“Tourism is not a secondary consideration — it is the economic backbone of the Caribbean. The time has come for CARICOM to treat it as such, with the urgency, resources, and political will the sector demands,” Bartlett said.
The veteran tourism leader, widely regarded as one of the Caribbean’s most influential voices in global travel and tourism, stressed that the industry’s influence extends far beyond hotels and resorts. He noted that tourism drives critical sectors including aviation, agriculture, construction, creative industries, financial services, and small business development.
According to Bartlett, CARICOM’s regional integration ambitions cannot be fully realized unless tourism is formally recognized as the Caribbean’s principal economic driver.
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“We cannot speak credibly about economic integration while leaving our largest industry to navigate global headwinds alone,” he stated. “CARICOM must establish a dedicated, high-level tourism mandate — with binding commitments, coordinated policies, and shared investment frameworks — that reflects the weight the industry carries in every member state.”
The Jamaican minister outlined several priority areas where coordinated regional action is urgently needed. These include the development of a comprehensive Regional Tourism Strategy, stronger visa and travel facilitation measures, the creation of a Caribbean Tourism Resilience Fund, accelerated digital transformation initiatives, and expanded human capital development programs.
Bartlett also underscored the need for Caribbean nations to build greater ownership of tourism’s supply chains in order to reduce economic leakage and retain more revenue within regional economies.
“Building capacity for the region to own the supply side of tourism is imperative to ensuring less leakage and more retention on every dollar earned,” he said.
He further argued that the Caribbean’s diversity should be leveraged as a unified strength under a coordinated CARICOM tourism framework.
“The world’s leading destinations do not succeed in isolation,” Bartlett observed. “Our diversity is our strength — but only if we harness it together under a CARICOM framework that puts tourism at the very top of our collective agenda.”
Bartlett confirmed that Jamaica will continue engaging regional counterparts to build consensus around a broader Caribbean tourism integration agenda, as leaders and industry stakeholders prepare to gather for one of the region’s premier travel trade events.
