Time for tourism change

BARBADOS TOURISM needs “frills and a game-changer”.
This is the view of St George South MP Dwight Sutherland, who urged tourism promoters to add frills to Barbados’ “core business” – sun, sand and sea.
The “frills” include medical, sports, heritage and environmental tourism, areas where Sutherland complained Barbados was not placing enough attention. He said that with its good cadre of doctors and other professionals Barbados could be a major player in the area of medical tourism.
He said Barbados’ emphasis needed to be on carving out niche tourism markets because “cut-price tourism is not part of our domain”. He told Government to “go back to the niche marketing that made Barbados the beacon in terms of tourism attraction”.
“The Ministry of Tourism needs something called a game-changer,” Sutherland told the House. “We are at a stage where we have a pretty mature tourism product. But what will give it that cutting edge? We need to reinvent and we need to re-engineer the tourism product,” said Sutherland.
He was contributing to debate on two tourism-related bills in the House of Assembly on Tuesday. (TY)