Ccommunity-based operators, not large hotels, represent the “new frontier” for the tourism industry’s success in Barbados and they must be treated in that way.
That was the message to Government from Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne yesterday as he called for concessions to be made available to more Barbadian entities involved in tourism, including rum shops and cricket clubs.
Thorne was speaking in the House of Assembly during debate on the Tourist Accommodation Bill, 2025, which was later passed.
“One previously thought of tourism as a hotel in the more glamorous areas, obviously along the corridors of the South Coast and the West Coast, and that was one’s concept of tourism, except that we are now in an age in which we may have to ask the Government to consider . . . that tourism has moved away from those corridors and has moved inland into the villages,” he said.
“Quite literally, tourism has moved on to the . . . cricket fields of Barbados. That is where community tourism needs to go, and needs to go with considerable Government assistance.”
Thorne said he looked forward to the day when the term community tourism “will disappear, because language has a way of identifying a sector as being of some lesser status, and as long as community tourism is hosting human beings, it cannot be deemed to be of any lesser status”.
“And in perhaps in five, ten, years, people will regard it as being equally prestigious as would be the Hiltons and Sandy Lanes and so on,” the Member of Parliament for Christ Church South said.
“They all host human beings and those human beings will contribute to the national income, and those human beings will make their assessments as to the worth of Barbados, and therefore we will come to consider this sector as being important.”
Thorne urged Government to “seriously . . . consider the importance of . . . what I call the new frontier in tourism, and to give equal concessions to that new and emerging sector” as it provided for the villa sector.
“The villa industry . . . can bring in pieces of art and get concessions on it, they can bring in a dish or spoon and get concessions on it. I don’t know why a shop in My Lord’s Hill or on Lodge Road that hosts tourists cannot equally get concessions,” he said.
“I don’t know why Barbadians sit and accept this discriminatory treatment as if it is the natural order of things.”
Thorne said he had a dream where the popular fishing village Oistins, located in his constituency, was rebuilt as “a heritage town” which had homes resembling “what the old Barbadian village looked like”.
He also envisaged tourism concessions being offered to the village rum shop in the context of community tourism. Thorne mentioned, for example, that there was a small establishment in My Lord’s Hill, St Michael where he saw “persons whom I identified as tourists . . . having a grand time”.
“These are no less tourist destinations than the Hilton. That’s where the people go. They go to Oistins – they go there so that that gives them the intimate contact with Barbadians. . . that they want,” he asserted.
“I put the case, therefore, for the extension of concessions to persons who own what the English call the village shop, they need concessions too. They cater to the tourism industry too.
“So, I plead with the Government, when it is giving these generous concessions, to consider the village shop from St Lucy right down to Christ Church and across to St Philip, and . . . St John.”
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