Caribbean Week and the Emergence of a New Caribbean Tourism Agenda | News

My first Caribbean Week in New York came with a degree of curiosity. Over the past year, I have covered many of the defining gatherings in global travel, from the WTTC Global Summit in Rome, the UN Tourism General Assembly and TOURISE in Riyadh, FITUR in Madrid and ITB Berlin, to ILTM Africa and WTM Africa in Cape Town, ITB China in Shanghai, Caribbean Travel Marketplace in Antigua & Barbuda and the IATA Annual General Meeting in Rio de Janeiro. Against that backdrop, I arrived wanting to understand why Caribbean Week continues to hold such an important place in the region’s tourism calendar.

What I discovered over four days of meetings, ministerial discussions, industry briefings and more than twenty one-to-one interviews was an event that feels increasingly unlike a traditional tourism conference. Caribbean Week remains an important platform for destination promotion, relationship building and market engagement. Yet it is also becoming something more significant, a forum where the region’s leaders are beginning to debate the future shape of Caribbean tourism itself.

That evolution reflects the growing maturity of the Caribbean tourism sector. For decades, the region’s tourism strategy has understandably focused on attracting visitors, building air connectivity, expanding accommodation capacity and strengthening one of the most recognisable destination brands in global travel. Those efforts have been remarkably successful. Tourism today underpins economic activity across much of the region and remains one of the most powerful drivers of employment, investment and foreign exchange earnings.

Yet throughout Caribbean Week there was a clear sense that many leaders believe the next stage of development will require a broader conversation.

The Caribbean’s challenge is no longer simply how to attract visitors. It is how to maximise the value that tourism creates, how to retain more of that value within local economies and how to ensure tourism serves as a catalyst for broader economic development.

That distinction may appear subtle. Its implications are profound.

The importance of the United States remains beyond question. New York continues to serve as the Caribbean’s most important tourism marketplace and the United States remains the region’s largest customer. American travellers account for approximately half of all stayover arrivals to the Caribbean and generate tens of billions of dollars in annual visitor expenditure each year. For many destinations, no other source market comes close in either volume or economic contribution.

What was notable, however, was that the conversation no longer ended there.

While the United States remains the foundation of Caribbean tourism, discussions throughout the week increasingly focused on where future growth may emerge. Latin America featured prominently in conversations with tourism boards, airlines and hotel groups. Several destinations reported encouraging growth from Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and other South American markets, particularly within higher-spending segments. Improved connectivity and growing regional awareness are beginning to create opportunities that were largely absent a decade ago.

Beyond Latin America, there was also considerable discussion around longer-term opportunities in the Gulf, Africa and China. No one suggested these markets would replace North America, nor was that the objective. Rather, there was recognition that future resilience will depend upon diversification. Tourism leaders increasingly view aviation strategy, trade relationships and international partnerships as central components of destination development. The Caribbean’s future growth story will not be written solely in tourism board marketing plans. It will be shaped through connectivity, investment and the ability to position the region within emerging global travel flows.

Alongside these discussions was a noticeable shift in the role being played by the Caribbean Tourism Organization itself.

For many outside the region, CTO has traditionally been viewed primarily as a destination marketing and advocacy organisation, responsible for promoting the Caribbean brand, supporting member destinations and convening industry stakeholders. While those functions remain central to its mission, Caribbean Week suggested an organisation in the midst of a broader evolution.

In many ways, the week felt like the emergence of a new identity for CTO.

Rather than simply serving as the organisation behind Caribbean Week, CTO increasingly appears to be positioning itself as a strategic platform for tourism policy, economic development, innovation and regional collaboration. The conversations taking place throughout the week reflected an organisation becoming more comfortable operating at the intersection of tourism, technology, investment, workforce development and public policy.

Under the leadership of Secretary-General Dona Regis-Prosper, there is a growing sense that CTO is seeking to play a larger role in shaping the future of Caribbean tourism rather than simply promoting its present. The organisation has become an increasingly effective convener, bringing together ministers, development agencies, airlines, cruise operators, hoteliers, technology companies, investors and educators around a shared set of challenges and opportunities.

That shift was evident throughout the programme. Discussions around artificial intelligence were substantive rather than speculative. Conversations about resilience extended beyond climate adaptation to include economic resilience, workforce resilience and supply chain resilience. There was a clear willingness to tackle complex issues such as economic leakage, local value creation and regional competitiveness, subjects that sit far beyond the traditional remit of destination marketing.

The strongest expression of this broader ambition came with the launch of the Tourism Supply Side Initiative, which many participants viewed as the most consequential announcement of the week.

For more than half a century, Caribbean tourism policy has focused primarily on the demand side of the equation. Success was measured by visitor arrivals, hotel occupancy, cruise passenger volumes and tourism receipts. Those metrics remain important, but they reveal only part of the picture.

The Supply Side Initiative starts from a different premise. It asks not only how many visitors arrive, but how much of their spending remains within Caribbean economies.

Formally launched during Caribbean Week by CTO Chairman and Barbados Minister of Tourism and International Transport Ian Gooding-Edghill, alongside Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett, who will chair the newly established Tourism Supply Side Ministerial Committee, the initiative represents one of the most ambitious attempts yet to redefine the role of tourism in Caribbean development.

The initiative has been driven by the vision of Secretary-General Dona Regis-Prosper and supported by a growing coalition of governments, development institutions and private-sector partners. Joining the launch remotely, Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis and CARICOM Chairman Dr Terrance Drew described it as a defining moment for the region, arguing that the next chapter of Caribbean tourism must focus not only on growth but on resilience, inclusion and development.

Research presented during the week highlighted a challenge long understood by economists but often overlooked in tourism strategy. While tourism generates substantial revenues across the region, significant portions of visitor expenditure frequently leave local economies through imported goods, overseas ownership structures and fragmented supply chains. Retention rates vary considerably from destination to destination. Some jurisdictions retain only a relatively small proportion of visitor spending, while others have succeeded in keeping far greater value circulating within domestic economies.

The initiative seeks to address that imbalance by strengthening the connections between tourism and the wider economy. Agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing, logistics, professional services, technology, creative industries and local SMEs all have a role to play in ensuring tourism functions as a more powerful engine of development.

What makes the initiative particularly interesting is its scale of ambition. This is not simply a local procurement programme or a collection of isolated projects. The framework encompasses eight strategic pillars covering tourism economic linkages, supply chain resilience, regional collaboration, digital infrastructure, investment, logistics, workforce development and visitor facilitation.

At its core is a recognition that tourism cannot achieve its full developmental potential if it operates in isolation from the rest of the economy.

The vision presented in New York imagines a future where Caribbean hotels source more produce from Caribbean farmers, where regional manufacturers supply a greater share of tourism demand, where digital platforms connect buyers and suppliers across borders, where logistics networks become more efficient, and where local entrepreneurs participate more fully in tourism value chains.

If realised, the implications would extend well beyond tourism itself.

The initiative has the potential to influence employment, entrepreneurship, food security, regional trade, investment flows and economic resilience. It represents a shift from viewing tourism primarily as a consumer of economic activity to viewing it as a catalyst for broader economic development.

That explains why support for the initiative extended well beyond governments. The Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association, under the leadership of President Sanovnik Destang, has become an important partner in its development, alongside CTO allied members, regional institutions and technical experts from across the tourism ecosystem.

Several participants described the initiative as the beginning of a third chapter in Caribbean tourism.

The first chapter was attracting visitors.

The second was building connectivity, infrastructure and scale.

The third may be about value creation, economic linkages and ensuring tourism delivers more inclusive and resilient prosperity.

Looking beyond the immediate policy agenda, there were also encouraging signs that the region is investing in the next generation of tourism leadership.

One of the highlights of the week was the CTO Regional Nex-Gen Tourism Showcase, delivered in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Royal Caribbean Group Foundation. The programme brought together students from across the Caribbean to develop and present innovative solutions to tourism challenges, offering a glimpse into how future leaders are thinking about sustainability, technology, entrepreneurship and destination development.

The winning team came from the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College in the British Virgin Islands, representing the Government of the Virgin Islands. Naomi Onwufuju, Adrianne Thomas and Auri Ana El Sahibs impressed judges with a presentation that combined creativity, commercial thinking and a sophisticated understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing Caribbean tourism. Supported by their chaperone, Ziina Hanley of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sustainable Development, their success served as a reminder that the future competitiveness of Caribbean tourism will depend as much on developing talent as it does on developing infrastructure.

That, perhaps, was the most striking takeaway from Caribbean Week.

For all the discussion around visitor growth, airlift, artificial intelligence and investment, the central theme was ultimately people. How tourism can create more opportunity. How it can support more entrepreneurs. How it can strengthen communities. How it can retain more value within local economies.

The Caribbean tourism industry has long been recognised for its resilience. What became apparent in New York is that the region is also becoming increasingly sophisticated in how it thinks about growth. Success is no longer being measured solely through arrivals and occupancy rates. The conversation is expanding to include participation, productivity, value retention and long-term economic impact.

For a first-time attendee, Caribbean Week felt less like a celebration of where the industry is today and more like a serious discussion about where it wants to be tomorrow.

If the ideas launched and debated during the week gain momentum, Caribbean Week 2026 may come to be remembered as an important marker in the continuing evolution of Caribbean tourism, from an industry focused primarily on attracting visitors to one increasingly focused on maximising the value those visitors create for the people who call the region home. More importantly, it may also be remembered as the week when the Caribbean Tourism Organization itself began to reveal a broader ambition, not simply to market the Caribbean to the world, but to help shape the future of the Caribbean visitor economy.

By Justin Cooke