Mandeville, Manchester – A long-standing, oft-repeated criticism of Jamaica’s US billion-dollar-plus tourism industry is that not enough benefits flow to the wider population.

For Diana McIntyre-Pike the simple, obvious solution is community tourism.

McIntrye-Pike, for years Jamaica’s most vocal advocate of the community approach to tourism, heads the Countrystyle Community Tourism Network – which includes a community tour enterprise and a training institute – based at her Astra Country Inn in Mandeville.

She proudly declares that over the past 10 years, 5,000 people have been trained by the Countrystyle Institute for Sustainable Tourism (CIST), which she co-founded with director Barry Bonitto. And under the Countrystyle Villages Programme, 25 communities in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean are reaping the benefits of being direct hosts to tourists.

Yet, she is adamant that community tourism is not a niche market and should not be viewed as such. “Community tourism is an approach to developing a country (and an industry) in a sustainable way.” she told students of the Northern Caribbean University (NCU) at a hospitality careers’ seminar at the Golf View Hotel in Mandeville recently.

McIntyre-Pike is happy that tourism leaders in the private sector and Government are buying into the community concept as crucial to the growth and development of the vacation and leisure industry.

“The players in tourism are recognising that it can’t be just sun, sand, sea anymore . Community tourism is for everybody, not just the small man, but the big man,” she said.

Indeed, she boasts that the Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart-owned Sandals all-inclusive group is “on board” as a Countrystyle partner. “Butch Stewart is now one of our patrons and is working together with us in demonstrating that an all-inclusive can work with a community tourism approach,” said McIntyre-Pike.

She told the careers’ seminar participants of how she invited Stewart to the village of Resource in South Manchester.

“He (Stewart) had a wonderful time,” said McIntyre-Pike. “He went up there, walked down to a humble home, ate with the people, had natural juices straight from the tree, and afterwards learnt the old time way of doing bammy. He said it was the best experience he had had in a long, long time.”

As a result, Stewart made it clear he would be very amenable to invitations to participate in the village programme. “We didn’t do anything different, but what they (village hosts) did do is have a clean environment, a very hospitable environment and they gave us some very good food to eat,” said McIntyre-Pike.

The Countrystyle village tour is marketed at US$50 per person with a cut to travel agents, tour operators and hosts.

The way McIntyre-Pike tells it, the village tour has opened up new and expanded entrepreneurial and employment opportunities.

“For you who are coming into the tourism world, this is exciting,” she told the NCU students. “You can be entrepreneurs, and you can have a job and still be an entrepreneur.

If you understand the dynamics of community tourism you will be able to get your communities mobilised and partnering with the network that we have established.

“The communities are destinations for development. That’s the way you have to see it. Every citizen is a potential business partner and they can be trained in small business management, environmental awareness, product development and marketing. They should understand how to value their community assets, culture, heritage, cuisine and lifestyle.,” she added.

The successful development of the village-type enterprise would provide opportunities for people willing to serve in a variety of ways, including as cooks, guides, gardeners, artists, craft designers, folk singers, even storytellers.

“People will pay to listen to good stories about the community and the country,” according to McIntyre-Pike.

“If you can do healthy foods, people will come to your communities just to have some good, healthy food. You can become a bed and breakfast operator from your private home, if you have an extra room,” she said.

“Even if you don’t have an extra room, some people are willing to share, once they know … They are even willing to go and shower outside if that’s what you have, or use the pit toilet if that’s what you have. They are not fussy. As long as they know, and as long as it’s clean, clean as a whistle,” she said.

McIntyre-Pike identified farm vacations as an aspect of community tourism beckoning for exploration.

Crucially, said McIntyre-Pike, there must be scrupulous attention to cleanliness and protection of the environment. It was an area that required focused attention by community and national leaders in terms of getting Jamaicans more aware and educated.