Commonwealth Tourism Ministers Meeting

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to this, the third Commonwealth Tourism Ministers Meeting.

From Kuala Lumpur in March 2004, to Abuja in April 2005, to London now, we can’t be accused of being frequent flyers, nor of being frequent holiday-makers. When we meet, we conduct important business, and there is important business to conduct today.

Our official mandate to promote tourism is from Heads of Government, and our constituents are not so much other countries’ citizens who visit us as tourists, but our own citizens, and the benefits that they can derive from tourism. Above all, our constituents are the poorest people in our developing country societies: how can tourism be part of the magic elixir of transformation, which brings with it political stability, economic growth, and social cohesion? That is the question.

‘Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and I remember more than I have seen’, wrote the 19^th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. He wrote with the confused indulgence more befitting the 21^st Century consumer – but we meet today as the provider, and our sights are set on those at the end of the chain: those who stand to benefit from tourism, with bettered lives.

We know very well that tourism is very big business. For small island states, it is almost the only business: it accounts for nearly 50% of GDP in the Maldives, for instance. We know that tourism has grown exponentially: from an annual 25 million international tourists half a century ago, to over 800 million now, and an annual income of over $700 billion.

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But with size, comes vulnerability. I would like to look briefly today at the challenges faced by our two main audiences – the ‘upper end’ comprising the tourists themselves and the Ministries of Tourism, National Tourism Offices and private sector operators who serve them; and the ‘lower end’, those whom I have called our real constituents: the citizens who stand to benefit from the tourists that their towns and regions attract.

At the upper end, our natural first concern is the financial turmoil in which the world currently finds itself, and in which the rich world’s woes are proving contagious for the poor. I am on record as calling the poorer countries the ‘collateral damage’ of the present crisis. The truth is, we don’t yet know how much tourism - from the richer world to the poorer - will be cut. But we do recognise the need for countries to encourage tourists from domestic and regional markets.

And how can the Commonwealth respond? By promoting domestic tourism – which we have done, for instance, in South Africa and Cameroon.

Coupled with the financial crisis, come the crises of food and fuel. Rising food prices are a threat to countries which rely heavily on imported food. When they are seen alongside the high fuel costs which affect the cost of transportation, it’s very clear that most destinations will see a rise in costs, that will in turn threaten their competitiveness.

Our Commonwealth response? One of them is to develop and diversify local agriculture so that countries can meet the culinary demands of the tourism industry – as we have done in Barbados.

A further threat to the upper end of tourism is the very environment which is, as often as not, the reason why people travel. That environment is degrading fast: shrinking ice-caps, expanding deserts, rising waters mean that our climate is changing. Just last week, we read of The Maldives trying to buy alternative land – in effect, trying to flee rising waters. We read, too, of the environmental refugees from the Pacific Island of Tuvalu, who seek new lives in Australia.

Much of our Commonwealth response to climate change is at the global, inter-governmental, policy level. But some of it is at the national level, and some of it is specifically concerned with eco-tourism. I cite our work in Botswana as an example.

One of the corollaries of climate change is natural disaster, which can have devastating effects on the tourist industry.

Again, much of our Commonwealth work is at the international policy level, focussed on the best practice of disaster preparedness and disaster response. But we have been active on the ground as well. Witness our Commonwealth work when the Maldives and Sri Lanka were hit by the Tsunami, and Grenada was lashed by Hurricane Ivan.

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And then, at the other end of the scale, the ‘lower end’, there are the vulnerabilities of the poorest people, and how they are exacerbated – or lessened – by tourism.

Here, there is the principle and the practice. The principle began with the 1999 UN Commission on Sustainable Development, which urged governments to maximise the potential of tourism for eradicating poverty. And most of you here today were in London anyway, for the UN World Tourism Organization’s meeting on Responsible Tourism.

Good principle does not always mean good practice, though. The traditional approach of taxing tourism to generate national revenue, does not guarantee that the revenue will directly benefit the poor.

Direct employment of poor people in tourism is seen as one way of addressing poverty through tourism. But then, we need to ensure that proper wages are paid, and proper laws observed. We also need to develop local skills – just as the Commonwealth has done in the Caribbean and in Southern Africa, where we have developed national strategies to develop human resources in the tourism sector.

We have also developed ways of plugging so-called ‘leakages’ in tourist-dependent economies, to stop tourist income passing out of the local economy when goods and services have to be imported. The Commonwealth recipe is to maximise the resources which can be sourced locally. There is a role for governments, private sector and civil organizations to play in this, as we have found in Barbados, for instance.

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I have painted the briefest of sketches of the world of Commonwealth tourism, and the challenges it faces. There are more on which I haven’t touched – terrorism and disease to name but two.

I have hinted at some of the ways in which the Commonwealth responds to them, above all through Commonwealth Secretariat technical assistance to the tune of some £2 million in 15 countries in the last 5 years.

Also, I salute the Commonwealth Tourism Centre which opened in Kuala Lumpur in 2006. I warmly commend the latter for such innovations as the first Commonwealth sport tourism conference. I also offer my sincere thanks to the Government of Malaysia for three years funding to date, with two more to come.

At the same time, I lay down the challenge that the CTC has to secure its sustainability with private sector funding. Because, more and more, businesses are stakeholders in the ‘triple bottom line’ of tourism: its economic benefits, for sure – but also its social and environmental benefits.

I wish you well in this morning’s discussions. I call on you to think creatively about all of the challenges we face – at what I have called the upper end and the lower end of tourism. In particular, I ask you to think how this extraordinary network that is the Commonwealth can share its best thinking and its best ways of doing things. Information technology is one obvious answer, but there are many other ways. This Commonwealth Tourism Ministers Meeting is one of them.

I now turn to the first item on our agenda: the election of the Chair of the Meeting. I am delighted to propose the Tourism Minister of St Lucia, Senator Allen Chastenet, in this important role. Mr Chair, ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all success as you now turn to business. Thank you.

ENDS