by Emmanuel H. Joseph
Government Information Service
Director of Tourism and Chief Executive Officer of Discover Dominica, Colin Piper, has presented a five year tourism strategy and action plan to Government for its consideration. The new plan will review and revise some of the goals and objectives as outlined in the original Tourism Master Plan which was developed five years ago.
The plan focuses heavily on increasing visitors to the island and increasing revenue left behind by cruise and stay over visitors. According to the Director of Tourism, more needs to be done to improve the quality of service in our tourism product.
 Director of Tourism and
Chief Executive Officer of
Discover Dominica,
Colin Piper
“If we maintain the margin growth rates in cruise at 3.5%, we will hit approximately six hundred and fifty-four thousand (654 000) cruise passengers by 2015. Therefore, I am suggesting that we focus on cruise change to less numbers and increasing more so the quality of service and experience to increase the revenue left behind on the island.”
The Ministry of Tourism is looking to partner with the private sector to improve the tourism sector in a number of areas. Mr. Piper explains these areas:
“I think that we need to focus on nature, culture and adventure and furthermore, we need to focus on nature, culture and adventure and furthermore, we need to develop some supporting initiatives in order to achieve that. These need to be focused on developing island-wide programmes and marketing campaigns to support those: developing enabling policies that incent private sector to invest, coming up with island-wide product development and island-wide public awareness campaigns.
This is the point at which we are at and this is the kick-off point to get the private sector more involved to give us additional input into how we develop some of these programmes and campaigns. What you need in terms of enabling policies and what we need to do from a stand point of providing product development and also public awareness campaigns.”
In the meanwhile of tourism is reporting that the year 2009 was a very difficult year for tourism in Dominica as it was faced by double-digit declines in some of its key source markets including the United Kingdom as well as a decline in spending in both the stay over and cruise segments of the industry.
The Ministry with tourism stakeholders at that same meeting on February 8, 2010, to dialogue on how to develop a greater level of collaboration and partnership to further expand their businesses and bring greater benefits to Dominica.
At that meeting, Hon. Tourism Minister, Ian Douglas, advised stake holders that the task ahead is not an easy one for them within the tourism sector and as such collaboration within stakeholders is even more imperative and pointed a way forward for all.
 Hon. Minister of Tourism,
Ian Douglas
“Today, my hope is for us to begin a new period of dialogue and thinking of how we fashion and refashion this new tourism development agenda to be the best and world class bearing in mind the various tools at our disposal and understanding the current global climate in which we have to operate. We need to specifically utilise the Tourism Policy Document that has served to guide our many actions and the Tourism Master Plan that gives us the blueprint for undertaking the many actions required to advance our development agenda. We also need to refer to the studies and plans developed during the Eco-Tourism Development Programme and those commissioned recently by the SFA2006 Tourism Development Programme. Studies such as the Roseau Development Programme, the Botanic Gardens Plan, studies on health and wellness, the Portsmouth Citizens Development Plan, our weddings and honeymoon study and other various studies on the yachting industry, the recent FCCA Cruise study all need to be used in our efforts at strategising the way forward.
Friends, colleagues, we have a massive agenda over the next few years to take us to the next level of global competitiveness.”
The tourism Minister noted that the recent global impact on Dominica’s tourism industry has presented stakeholders with an ideal opportunity to re-evaluate how they conduct their affairs in tourism development. |
