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Contact:
John Emmanuel
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Participants from wide cross-section of
tourism interests at workshop |
Monday, March 15, 2004 - A 2-day workshop got underway here aimed at
putting in place, quality control and monitoring standards for the tourism
sector. The initiative comes against the backdrop of continued rapid growth
being experience by the service sector, especially over the last decade. For St.
Lucia and other Caribbean islands, tourism has become the major contributor to
Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The March 15 and 16 workshop taking place at the Bay Gardens Hotel is being
spearheaded by the St. Lucia Bureau of Standards and the Ministry of Tourism,
with much collaboration from the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO). Director of the St. Lucia Bureau of Standards, Dr. Allison Plumber,
explained that the initiative represented a significant milestone, marking a
shift from the traditional focus on standards and quality to just the trade of
products.
The industry, she pointed out was faced with severe global competition. “When we
look around, we see several locations that offer the same kind of product that
we offer, basically the sun, sea, and sky therefore, it’s not just a matter of
how well we can market our product, but really to gain that competitive
advantage, that edge over similar locations, and quality standards can deliver
that for us,” said Dr. Plummer to participants, who represented a wide cross
section of the industry.
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I.S.O facilitators Andreu Raya-Demidoff, Almudean
Amores and Virginia Gomez meet with SLTB and SLBS officials |
Seeing the importance of the service sector, the overriding view is that
quality issues must be explored in a consistent and scientific manner. The ISO
programme is expected to introduce both large and small tourism interests to the
principles of an internationally recognized quality management system. That fact
was reiterated by the Virginia Gomez of the ISO. “There is no doubt,” Ms. Gomez
said, “that quality management nowadays is a grade of management that affect all
of a company’s activities and based on that, managing to achieve quality should
be adopted in order to face the challenges posed by market liberalization.”
Efforts have been ongoing for some time now at ensuring that St. Lucia not only
survives, but lead the way in the regional tourism sector. That commitment was
further strengthened at the beginning of the 2003/2004 fiscal year, when
concrete plans for establishing, upgrading and implementing quality standards
for the island’s tourism product began taking shape. Tourism officials have to
date, developed five draft standards for the tourism sector namely,
accommodation, food and beverage, vending; water based tourism, and ground
transportation.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism Mrs. Maria Fowell indicated that
her staff members were keen on arriving at the implementation stages of those
standards, although that process, she explained “would require huge, but
necessary efforts if the island’s tourism industry was to provide higher levels
of visitor satisfaction, competitive advantage and economic returns.” Over the
next few months the Tourism Advisory Council (TAC) which is headed by Mrs.
Fowell, along with the Bureau of Standards, Tourism Minister Honourable Phillip
J. Pierre and other staff of his Ministry will discuss the institutional and
other arrangements that will be required for the implementation of tourism
standards in St. Lucia.
Plans are well advanced for two of the five drafts standards with progress on
the remaining three moving along steadily. The St. Lucia workshop which forms
part of a wider collaborative programme will be repeated in Barbados in the
coming days.
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