The Caribbean is not expected to carve out a larger piece of the travel and tourism industry over the next 10 years.

The region is expected to maintain a less than two per cent share of the sector even while its contribution to GDP is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 4.2 per cent through to 2022, according to the World Economic Forum Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2013

Travel and tourism currently accounts for nine per cent of the world’s GDP, earning countries globally US$6 trillion last year and employed 120 million direct jobs and another 125 million indirect jobs in related industries.

North East Asia is expected to move from 20 to 24 per cent of tourism earnings by 2022, while Europe’s and North America’s share are projected to decline to around 22 per cent each. Latin America is expected to maintain its six per cent share.

Nevertheless, there are some bright sparks for the Americas.

Traveling to the region, 31 per cent of the world’s population are not required to obtain a traditional visa prior to departure, making it more accessible than many other destinations.

The figure does vary widely across the subregions of the Americas.

Whereas North America is one of the most restricted subregions, where only 11 per cent of the world’s population can enter without a visa, the Caribbean is the third most open subregion in the world: 39 per cent of the world’s population have visa exemptions and eight per cent have the ability to obtain a visa on arrival.

“Destinations in the two other subregions–Central and South America– also abolished visas for comparatively many source markets, making the Americas the leading region in visa exemptions,” said the report.

East Africa and Southeast Asia are the most open, with 67 per cent and 65 per cent of the world, respectively, not requiring a visa to visit those locations.

The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI), which aims to measure the factors and policies that make it attractive to develop the travel and tourism sector in different countries, showed some positives for the region.

For the Americas, Barbados ranked third, after the US and Canada, and 27th in the world, up one place since the last assessment in 2011.

The country’s high affinity for Travel and Tourism, with a positive attitude toward tourists and toward the value of tourism in the country, placed in second in the world, although its ranking for the degree of customer orientation ranked it at 64th wroldwide.

Barbados places significant importance on prioritising hte industry, with emphasis put on the sector’s development by the government and high spending on the sector, ensuring effective destination marketing campaigns and collecting relevant sector data on a timely basis.

Panama witnesses one of the most marked improvements in this year’s TTCI, moving up from eighth to fourth in the region and from 56th to 37th overall.

“The country’s most important competitive advantage is its rich endowment of natural resources, with its diverse fauna, significant protected land areas, and a number of World Heritage sites,” said the report.

But the movement was primarily due to improvement in infrastructure.

The country’s tourism infrastructure has seen the number of available rooms increase, the quality of ground transport improve across all modes, with port infrastructure now ranked fourth and railroads ranked 32nd in the world. Air transport also improved, and is now ranked 16th.

“The expansion of stadium capacity and creative industries exports is also notable,” added the report.

Dominican Republic’s air transport and tourism infrastructure was not ranked as high as Jamaica, but its quality of roads ranked it at 62nd compared to Jamaica at 82nd.

Jamaica’s ranking for transparency of government policy making fell dramatically, from 64th to 115th, but Governemnt expenditure as a percentage of total budget was ranked fourth worldwide — higher than Barbados at sixth — even though overall prioritisation of the industry was ranked lower than Barbados at seventh.

The cost of rooms in Jamaica based on the hotel pirce index (HPI) — which is calculated by using the average room rate achieved by first-class hotels in each country over a 12-month period from January through December — was US$176.30, or well below the US$329.40 average in Barbados.

But it was still above regional counterparts like Panama (US$130.10) and Puerto Rico (US$168.10), while Dominican Republic’s HPI of US$92 placed it at 17th in the world.