The Editor, Sir:

Tourism has been branded as the saviour for our Jamaican economy. The Caribbean on a whole is the most tourism-dependent region in the world. Therefore, we should all put specific focus on its performance. However, we must not be quick to judge performance by arrivals only, and get too excited about it. Most governments seem to talk about arrivals and increasing arrivals as the indicator of performance.

Don't get me wrong, steady arrivals are important, but they tell only a fraction of the story of tourism performance. This is why it is important for the tourism ministry to quickly implement what they intend to do in bringing forward tourism satellite accounting, which measures the movement of the tourism dollar, quantifying how the rest of the economy benefits.

Costs of tourism

Tourism is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end. Therefore, linkages to other sectors of the economy must be created and accounted for. What must also be accounted for is the level of leakages; for example, when a large hotel does well, as a result of increased arrivals, does it use local agricultural production, or does it have to import? We, therefore, must also consider and measure the costs of tourism, prime among them the environmental costs; these too have an economic value, because they relate to the quality of our natural resources that tourism and livelihood depend on, over the long-term.

Therefore, judging tourism performance by arrivals and even the value of those arrivals is one thing, but it is no different from a businessman getting excited about sales only without considering the short and long-term expenses. We must try to measure the net performance of tourism (the bottom line) and communicate this to our people.

I am, etc.,

MARK PIKE

mark@cct-jamaica.com

President, UWI Tourism Society

National youth-ambassador-at-large