A senior Caribbean government minister has pointed to the debilitating effects that travel advisories can have on small, tourism-dependent nations in the region, describing them as unfair in their portrayal, using hyperbole that forces the allocation of scarce resources to counter.

Chester Cooper, deputy prime minister and minister of tourism, investments and aviation of The Bahamas, made the point in a firm presentation at the United Nations (UN) last week as the General Assembly observed UN Sustainability Week.

“As a destination we live and breathe by our reputation. Therefore, it is critical to highlight that travel advisories issued by large nations about The Bahamas and other Caribbean destinations have the potential to do incredible harm to our economies and disrupt our sustainability efforts,” Cooper said.

“We believe the release of these advisories without context is unfair and portrays a sensational narrative that we must expend scarce resources to correct,” he added.

Earlier this year the US State Department issued travel advisories against Jamaica and The Bahamas, citing criminal activity.

In the level three advisory on Jamaica issued on January 23, the State Department told Americans to reconsider travel to the island due to crime and access to medical services.

“Violent crimes, such as home invasions, armed robberies, sexual assaults, and homicides, are common. Sexual assaults occur frequently, including at all-inclusive resorts,” the advisory said. It did not specify any resorts at which crimes had occurred or give any details about dates or frequencies.

It also said that the police often do not respond effectively to serious criminal incidents and when arrests are made, cases are infrequently prosecuted to a conclusive sentence.

A week after the release of the advisory, Travel Weekly, the leading travel trade publication in the US, carried a response by Prime Minister Andrew Holness who, the publication said, “seemed genuinely perplexed” by the advisory’s content and timing.

Travel Weekly noted that two weeks before the advisory was released the Financial Times had written a glowing report about Jamaica’s economy, calling it “arguably one of the most remarkable and radical but under-appreciated turnaround stories in economic history”.

“Not only were economic metrics the envy of developing countries, but Holness said serious crime was down by 11 per cent last year, murders down by eight per cent, rapes down 15 per cent,” the Travel Weekly piece said, and quoted the prime minister as saying that the advisory runs “counter to the fact that the general trajectory of crimes, particularly serious crimes, are all heading down”.

In relation to The Bahamas, the US State Department, in its level two advisory, said that “gang-on-gang violence” is confined to specific cities and neighbourhoods, “primarily affecting the local population”.

Additionally, the US Embassy in Nassau released a security warning notifying would-be travellers that “murders have occurred at all hours, including in broad daylight on the streets”.

However, The Bahamas’s Ministry of Tourism said in a statement that the incidents described in the US Embassy crime alert “do not reflect general safety in The Bahamas, a country of 16 tourism destinations, and many more islands”.

It said the Bahamian Government is implementing a robust and innovative crime reduction and prevention strategy, “informed by the latest research and successful international models, focusing on five key pillars: prevention, detection, prosecution, punishment, and rehabilitation”.

Last week, in his address at the UN, Minister Cooper pointed out that tourism constitutes 65 per cent of his country’s gross domestic product, compared to the global average 0f 35 per cent for other small island developing states.

“In the past five years we have been battered by Hurricane Dorian; climate change; global shocks, like the pandemic; and geopolitical events. However, our tourism product has proven resilient, always coming back stronger than ever, leading to record numbers of almost 10 million visitors last year,” Cooper said.

“As we look towards the 2030 agenda and beyond, we note that our tourism success is informed by our commitment to the lives we uplift, the environments we preserve, and the community economies we sustain. We, therefore, hope the acceleration of international investment in sustainable tourism, as a priority sector for development with substantial support, becomes an added part of the collective legacy of this body,” he added.

He said The Bahamas has attracted more than $10 billion in tourism investments in the past three years by building connectivity with airport and seaport infrastructure, resorts, and a massive integration of renewable energy.

“We are scaling our approach through a destination stewardship programme designed in collaboration with the global sustainable tourism council. Notwithstanding, it is important to point out that the existing punishing one-size-fits-all rules and adverse listings from global economic organisations we are not a part of and we had no hand in creating make it all the more difficult to attract the foreign direct investments small island developing states critically need,” Minister Cooper said.

“We seek equity and fairness, and we believe the UN is the appropriate body to set proper standards in this regard,” he told the General Assembly, adding that, “The Bahamas remains resolute in the pursuit of its holistic, sustainable development goals, and we are committed to working closely with this body to achieve those aims.”