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SLHTP Underscores Need to Fully Develop Heritage Tourism

Contact: John Emmanuel

Monday, September 09, 2002 - As the St. Lucia Heritage Tourism Programme (SLHTP) prepares to enter a second phase, pending the availability of funding, word from the programme’s Chairman is that more still needs to be done, if St. Lucia is to fully reap the benefits from the rapidly increasing heritage tourism market.

According to Heritage Tourism Programme Chairman Leo Clarke, “I think we are still very much at the infant stage of a sector in the tourism industry that can turn out in the future to be exceedingly critical, not only for the existing persons engaged in it but for what it can do for persons in the future particularly small persons and communities who may want to get into tourism and who before may have seen tourism only in the context of large hotels and so on. Today that barrier has been broken and people see a possibility for them to participate meaningfully in tourism without having the large capital capability that you require to start large hotels and I think that that is significant.”

Clarke says notwithstanding the strides already made by the SLHTP in its first phase, programme officials remain cognisant of the fact that a sustained measure of assistance will be required to both individuals and communities involved in heritage tourism. In light of that the programme’s second phase he notes, will focus heavily on enterprise development and policy support for the heritage tourism sector.

Technical officers involved in various aspects of heritage tourism last week participated in a three-day workshop, aimed at assisting them in developing tools and methods of monitoring and evaluating achievements and impacts of projects and programmes implemented.

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