Working together to promote the Caribbean

Delegates to a the Caribbean Hotels and Tourism Association conference in Montego Bay have been urged to work together for the common good.

“Help us help each other,” association head Richard Doumeng (pictured) said.

But Doumeng also praised the Caribbean as a “tough cookie” and said the region remains one of “the most desirable places on the planet to come to.” He later said that those in the Caribbean’s tourist trade have to realize that “we’re not competing against each other anymore. We are competing against the rest of the world… We are stronger together as a region than any one country is on its own.”

Meanwhile, Evelyn Smith of the Jamaica Hotels and Tourism Association cited a number of reasons for Jamaicans to be upbeat about the country’s future tourism prospects.

A highway linking Ocho Rios and Kingston will see the first phase completed in 2015 and the second in 2016 and make travel between the north and south coasts much faster and “open up the island to multi-destination holidays,” she said.

Smith said she’s “very excited” about enhancements to Ocho Rios’ infrastructure. Jamaica last year saw more than two million stopover visitors in a calendar year for the first time in its history. The country’s tourism show of Japex will be held in September.