Long-term tourism plans should outlast governments, Hackett says

Zorisha Hackett says Tobago’s tourism strategy should be built to survive political change, citing governance continuity and long-term planning.

Brent Pin-heiro When it comes to tourism, Be-lize’s goals are clear: the coun-try aims to be-come a “unique, au-then-tic, sus-tain-able, and com-pet-i-tive world-class des-ti-na-tion” by 2030.. To do this, the coun-try de-vel-oped a Na-tion-al Sus-tain-able Tourism Mas-ter Plan (NSTMP), a 20-year strat-e-gy that guides in-fra-struc-ture, gov-er-nance, and in-vest-ment de-ci-sions, ac-cord-ing to Be-lize Chief Tourism Of-fi-cer Jo-sue Car-ballo.. Up-dat-ed in 2024 to ac-count for post-pan-dem-ic changes and in-cor-po-rate cli-mate re-silience strate-gies, in-clud-ing a com-mit-ment to plant

one mil-lion trees and oth-er sus-tain-abil-i-ty ini-tia-tives, Car-ballo said the plan is built on da-ta and, more im-por-tant-ly, long-term plan-ning.. Speak-ing with Guardian Me-dia at the Caribbean Tourism Or-ga-ni-za-tion’s Sus-tain-able Tourism Con-fer-ence in Be-lize last week, Car-ballo ex-plained that Be-lize fo-cus-es on high-val-ue, low-im-pact tourism, aim-ing to in-crease vis-i-tor spend-ing and the length of stay.. Lever-ag-ing its strengths in the blue, green, and or-ange economies, Be-lize has seen overnight stays in 2025 rise to 551,698

based on pre-lim-i-nary fig-ures, a 9.6 per cent in-crease from pre-pan-dem-ic lev-els.. But with tourism ac-count-ing for ap-prox-i-mate-ly 40 to 46 per cent of the coun-try’s US$6.5 bil-lion GDP, how does the coun-try stay on track when a change in gov-ern-ment could mean a com-plete-ly dif-fer-ent vi-sion?. Car-ballo said lead-ers have to think be-yond pol-i-tics.. “That’s crit-i-cal when you talk about medi-um to long-term plan-ning,” Car-ballo said.. He added: “Back when the NSTMP was done,

con-sul-ta-tion was on board with the gov-ern-ment and with the op-po-si-tion.. It’s im-por-tant from the be-gin-ning to have par-tic-i-pa-tion from all ma-jor en-ti-ties, in-clud-ing po-lit-i-cal par-ties on both ends.. So, they un-der-stand the process, they be-come a part of it, and then it be-comes a 15, 20, 30-year plan.” In Trinidad and To-ba-go, the con-cept of a long-term plan may still seem as-pi-ra-tional.. Past gov-ern-ments have of-ten dis-card-ed plans and projects cre-at-ed by ri-val po-lit-i-cal

par-ties.. But as To-ba-go be-gins im-ple-ment-ing its own tourism plans un-der the Far-ley Au-gus-tine-led ad-min-is-tra-tion, Tourism, An-tiq-ui-ties and Cre-ative In-dus-tries Sec-re-tary Zor-isha Hack-ett told Guardian Me-dia the key lies in build-ing a sol-id plan.. “We hope that gov-er-nance is con-tin-u-ous.. That is the aim, that you build plans so sol-id that even if a gov-ern-ment changes, they see the val-ue and mer-it in that plan,” she said, stress-ing the need for tech-nocrats and pub-lic ser-vants

to trans-fer in-sti-tu-tion-al knowl-edge “whether a par-tic-u-lar po-lit-i-cal or-gan-i-sa-tion is at the helm or not.” The To-ba-go Peo-ple’s Par-ty cur-rent-ly holds all 15 seats in the To-ba-go House of As-sem-bly, so un-like Be-lize, there is no op-po-si-tion to con-sult.. How-ev-er, Hack-ett said the TPP is work-ing with a 20-year plan for To-ba-go, one that ex-tends be-yond an elec-tion man-i-festo.. “We sat down and pulled out, as a seg-ment of the strate-gic de-vel-op-ment plan-ning path-way, what

we knew was a bite-sized por-tion that was re-al-is-able with-in this four-year pe-ri-od.. And so, we have been stick-ing very close-ly to it.. “Every sin-gle el-e-ment of the gov-er-nance struc-ture has to stick to that plan.. We re-view it quar-ter-ly.. We spend time re-al-ly go-ing over whether or not they’re still vi-able and still as rel-e-vant as we ex-pect them to be.” Hack-ett al-so re-vealed that the TPP is build-ing on el-e-ments of plans cre-at-ed

by the pre-vi-ous Peo-ple’s Na-tion-al Move-ment ad-min-is-tra-tion, with ad-just-ments, as part of what she de-scribed as ma-ture gov-er-nance.. “If we are re-al-ly cus-to-di-ans of the pub-lic purse, then we would un-der-stand when a plan is a good plan.. And a plan that ben-e-fits the peo-ple should be, with ma-ture and re-spon-si-ble gov-er-nance, ex-e-cut-ed to that place of com-ple-tion.. Gov-ern-ment come, gov-ern-ment go.”

long-term tourism planning, Tobago tourism strategy, Zorisha Hackett, sustainable tourism master plan, Belize tourism policy, governance continuity