Dear Editor,

The recent flare-up at a major hotel in Westmoreland has brought into focus problems in the tourism sector that deserve to be part of national discourse.

We tend to regard these problems as matters for the sector to deal with as it “sorts itself out”. In reality, however, any deep-seated problem that gnaws away at the nation’s number one foreign exchange earner and employer affects us all eventually.

For this reason, our product, the National Tourism Debate, encourages critical thinking among our young people and assists in their development of social responsibility by taking clear-eyed views of issues in the tourism sector. This is achieved by having to consider both sides of an issue to formulate a cogent argument for one or the other.

The National Tourism Debate competition has helped to produce for the employment market school-leaving young people with a heightened interest in and knowledge of the tourism industry. Many of them have joined the sector and will, hopefully, go on to become industry leaders in the future.

Their ability to appreciate both sides of an issue may lead to the evolution of a management style that delivers for the investor while defending the best interest of the worker who produces the dividends.

Hopefully, the industry’s support for the competition will increase as the wisdom of early sensitisation becomes more widely appreciated.

Over the 13 years of the competition’s existence our motions have focused on wage issues, the impact of social media, the impact of taxes on demand, and the value of the industry to the nation. So candid and forthright has the level of debate been that concerns have been raised within the sector that perhaps those discussions should be held in private.

With our new generation of TikTokers and social media influencers, there is need for information sources and guidance on which youth can draw for meaningful discussion, and the debate competition has helped in that regard. In our search for a sustainable tourism model we must be prepared to discuss issues affecting the industry at the community level and in schools. We must learn to disagree agreeably, which is a skill one develops in debating.

Our competition allows students to analyse critical issues, and the lack of support from corporate entities is disappointing. As our youth develop confidence, the ability to articulate persuasively in the classroom, empathy, tolerance, and adaptability to opposing viewpoints they will bring these qualities to their future roles in the working world.

We ask Jamaica to support and understand that expenditure on our youth is not an expense, it’s an investment.

Michelle Tulloch

National Tourism Debate