MINISTER of Tourism Edmund Bartlett is calling on the country to pay more attention to the supply side of tourism in order that more of the dollars earned from the industry remain in the country.

As the special guest speaker at the Rotary Club of Kingston Luncheon held at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel on Tuesday, Bartlett announced some encouraging news for the year-to-date winter season 2011. He said that provisional estimates show total visitors, including both stopover arrivals and cruise ship passengers, came to 1,053,737, a 9.4 per cent increase on last year’s figures. Gross foreign exchange earnings have also increased to US$766.6 million for the year to date, a 7.4 per cent increase.

This means that Jamaica is on its way to breaking the US$2 billion earning mark for the year.

Looking across the region, he said tourism is the single largest contributor to Gross Domestic Product in the Caribbean, which according to the UNWTO is valued at some US$39.4 billion based on 2010 estimates. Where tourism is concerned the Caribbean is 13th globally in absolute size; first in its relative contribution to national economies and 10th internationally in its contribution to long-term national growth.

Since Bartlett became minister of tourism back in 2007, tourism arrivals and earnings have grown year-on-year despite both natural and financial disasters that have plagued the country in that period.

“Our industry has proved resilient during periods of economic difficulty and its ability to recover rapidly and bring in revenue in the short term like no other industry. We need now to think about how we harness the market created by the hotels and other facilities for the millions of visitors coming to our region can help drive our own economic development.

“Tourism has, however, been marginalised over the years by being viewed merely as a generator of foreign exchange earnings. The full impact of tourism on the economy and the demand for goods and services must be determined in order to strategically plan and project in an effort to supply the needed goods and services.”

The way Bartlett sees it, tourism drives demand for goods and services for visitors which provides growth opportunities for the country’s agricultural and productive sectors.

“We have to begin to think about the tourism sector in a holistic development manner. In this way tourism can support our economic adjustment. In order for the tourism sector to spur the growth of the island’s agriculture sector and by extension the productive sector, we in tourism and our domestic industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, and services need to re-orient our thinking and come to regard our domestic market as larger than our population. We need to understand better that our market is the sum of all our visitors and residents and as such offer us new development opportunities.

“We need to encourage investment in industries that support the inputs required of the tourism sector. In that way we can retain an ever-increasing element of tourism revenue, stimulate local economic growth and broaden our tax base through the income that government receives from corporation and other taxes. This will enable tourism to stimulate domestic growth and in so doing help contribute more to the social services our people expect.

“The outputs of industry are the inputs of tourism, hence we need to streamline our industry in ways to help transform our economy and ensure our domestic investors and those from overseas who are interested in Jamaica see the bigger advantage this offers the productive sector when the demand our industry creates is better incorporated.”

Bartlett made it clear that for the supply side to be effective it was incumbent on hoteliers to pay suppliers on the due date and suppliers must provide goods and services in a timely fashion and pay particular attention to quality. “A hotelier cannot tell his guests that there will be no eggs for breakfast because our local supplier has let us down. It does not work that way. Hoteliers cannot be taking anywhere between 90 to 180 days to pay suppliers. That is unacceptable,” declared the Minister of Tourism.

The Economic Impact Study of Tourism has been commissioned and will be spearheaded by the CEO of GraceKennedy, Don Wehby. This will better enable the minister to assess the aggregate demand for goods and services that tourism generates.