PUBLISHED 5th NOVEMBER 2020
BUCKIE GOT IT
BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS AND NEVIS NEWS SOURCE
The strain on the world’s tourism economy brought about by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has not prevented the Ministry of Tourism from being proactive, as sector-wide training is still continuing.
Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism and Chairperson of the Sustainable Destination Council, Diannille Taylor-Williams, said that “Since we resumed work, we have had training for the members of the Destination Council … where we looked at the vision for the next five years.”
She mentioned that the Sustainable Destination Council trained persons involved in the tourism sector under the “I Speak St. Kitts, Culture and Heritage” workshop where the purpose was to improve awareness and appreciation of the Federation’s history and culture.
“We looked at music and dance, food and drink, traditional homes and games we used to play.
For the past three years, we have done the “I speak St. Kitts Sustainable Tourism”, specifically for the tourism businesses. This year for the first time, we introduced culture and heritage, and we think it came at an opportune time.
Mrs. Taylor-Williams said that “In the middle of what we are experiencing, one of the big things that we have as a destination is culture and heritage.”
“There are a number of heritage sites that are on St. Kitts terrestrially, and an equal number if not more in the marine environment, and so we thought it was timely to introduce this topic so that we have options to offer to our guests when we have become more mindful of the carrying capacity of some of our attractions, and so we have to offer alternatives to them and introduced our participants to new areas.”
She also stated that “In terms of our work, we came up with an action plan for the Council … such as our plastic-free campaign that has been revised and called plastic begone.”
“This is because we have been working in collaboration with the Department of Environment, which has already indicated its plan for the phasing out of single-use plastics over the next five years and our plan coincides with that because our plan is for the next five years and we are simply going to be bringing about greater awareness of the need to reduce single-use plastics,” said Mrs. Taylor-Williams
“We are hoping that even before a ban comes into play, our people would be so accustomed to not using single-use plastics based on the education that they would have received that it would not be a challenge by the time it is introduced,” she added.
