AN agreement for the establishment of an advisory committee of senior stakeholders across the tourism sector was the major development of a meeting yesterday between Tourism Minister Ed Bartlett and hotel mogul Gordon 'Butch' Stewart.

"This advisory committee would provide the minister and his team with a source of support and a strengthened knowledge base on critical initiatives the industry has to engage from time to time," a joint release from the tourism ministry and Stewart's Sandals Resorts group said last night.

During the meeting, held at the historic Devon House in Kingston, Bartlett and Stewart discussed the various ways in which they could collaborate and pool the ideas and passion of the sector's stakeholders to enable the Government to respond more sharply to the industry's needs.

The discussions came a week after Stewart, who is also chairman of this newspaper, criticised Bartlett for boasting about arrivals while paying little attention to improving the operations side of the tourism industry.

Yesterday, both men recognised and agreed on the successes and challenges the industry has had, given the global economic climate and the pressures on stakeholders to maintain competitiveness. They also agreed that there were additional areas to be explored that would undoubtedly lead to improvements for the sector, given the extremely volatile global economic climate within which the industry is operating.

"It was agreed that there is a need to expedite the nation's ability to more definitively measure the full impact of the tourism sector on GDP," the news release said. "The discussions around this resulted in recommendations for the implementation of a tourism satellite accounting methodology."

Both men also pledged to continue to focus their efforts on working together in the interest of the industry and the country.

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