Ministers to discuss Commonwealth tourism visa
The Commonwealth could be repositioned as a tourism bloc to drive economic recovery across the 56 member states, according to Jamaica tourism minister Edmund Bartlett.
Bartlett was in London in early August to present a series of proposals to the Commonwealth Secretariat, the intergovernmental agency of Commonwealth states.
A meeting of Commonwealth tourism ministers is now planned in London in November to discuss the proposal to develop the association as a tourism bloc.
Bartlett told Travel Weekly: “Many places need to recover [from the pandemic]. The Commonwealth needs to recover. An opportunity exists for tourism to be a lever to drive that recovery.
“The Commonwealth is already a geo-political bloc. It has a long history of diplomatic relations. But it does not do a lot of diplomacy. It does not do a lot of trade.
“We could start with visitor facilitation and harmonisation. We could create a common visa regime like the Schengen visa for tourism visitors, say for a maximum of 30 days, to allow travel within the Commonwealth.
“We would need an air service agreement and arrangements for air connectivity.”
He also suggested a strategy for “multi-destination tourism” to groups of Commonwealth destinations and said: “We could invest in tourism supplies for the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, Africa and the Pacific rim countries.”
The larger Commonwealth states could also invest in training in destinations “because tourism is moving away from unskilled and semi-skilled casual labour to a skilled workforce”, he argued.
Bartlett said the Commonwealth secretariat was already looking at the pandemic’s impact on small island states, but he pointed out: “Tourism can reposition the Commonwealth.
“If we build tourism capacity, we build capacity for many things because the inputs of tourism are multiple. It is not a discreet economic activity. It is a confluence of economic and social activities that come together to make an experience.
“It doesn’t happen unless the infrastructure is in place, the energy, the food supplies, so if you develop tourism, you develop the economy.”
He argued: “If you want tourism to grow, grow everything.”
Bartlett added: “Tourism is the simplest way of transferring wealth from rich to poor because the propensity of the tourist to consume is three times that of the home citizen.
“Tourism is a huge driver of recovery. But we need a level of travel facilitation – visas, air service agreements. Then upskill SMEs because they are the real drivers of the industry.”
