Ever since Christopher Columbus discovered the West Indies at the end of the 15th century, the Caribbean economy has relied to a degree on the natural resources to be found in the islands or on crops grown in the fertile soil.
Thereafter, the many European colonising nations such as Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and Holland brought immense change and diversity to the Caribbean. Unfortunately, they also brought war and conflict with them as they battled with each other for supremacy in the area. Islands changed hands, sometimes at regular intervals and slavery became a lucrative trade with the importation of slaves from Africa to work the vast sugar plantations created by the Europeans.
It seems that the Europeans persuaded the farmers in the Caribbean to switch from tobacco and cotton production to sugar cane in the face of competition from the North American colonies, which led to depressed prices for these commodities.
So it was that sugar cane became one of the main crops produced in the Caribbean with large plantations being established by the European colonisers to feed their taste for the sweet sugar grown and milled in the Caribbean. Sugar cane first arrived from Brazil and was introduced by the Dutch around the turn of the 17th century. Sugar cane continued to be grown throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and affected most islands in the region. Of course, sugar cane production not only created sugar but rum and molasses.
Bananas also became one of the major crops of the Caribbean and their exportation to the preferential markets of Europe boosted local economies.
Although sugar and bananas remained as large crops in the Caribbean their popularity did not so much decline in the markets of Europe but rather that erstwhile colonies no longer attracted preferential trading status.
Since that time in the late 20th century there has been a marked decline in those markets for the Caribbean but attention has turned to other revenue earning commodities such as tourism and banking.
Tourism in the Caribbean region came about because it has long enjoyed the attention of visitors from both the continents of North America and Europe and, with the growth in air travel, visitors from the far reaches of the globe now also arrive regularly on the pristine shores of the Caribbean islands.
Many regular visitors have been going back to the Caribbean for years and it is said in Barbados that the majority of the tourists who visit that island return there again. Some go year after year and will never go anywhere else.
Tourism has been a part of life in the Caribbean since commercial air travel became accessible and affordable to the majority. It is because of this that there is a complete tourist infrastructure already present in the Caribbean. The major industry of many Caribbean islands is Tourism and they rely on it and ensure they provide the right infrastructure to support its continuation. This established tourist market is also a boon to investors who are looking for a low-risk market in which to enter.
Attracting tourists and property investors goes hand-in-hand for many Caribbean economies, where local governments recognise the importance of investors and provide tax concessions to entice would be investors to the islands.
The demand for tourism is backed up by a number of research studies by world bodies. For example, in its report ‘Tourism Highlights 2009′, the World Tourism Organisation (WTO) shows that Tourist Arrivals to the Caribbean has been consistently rising year-on-year since 1990. In that year 11.4 million arrivals were recorded and the latest figures available from 2008 show that 20.2 million arrivals were recorded. This demonstrates an increase of 8.8 million visitors during the intervening 18 years.
Whilst the global recession was beginning to bite deep in many areas, particularly areas where tourism is a major industry such as in Europe, the Caribbean remained largely unaffected. Again the WTO report ‘Tourism Highlights 2009′ shows that the Caribbean increased its US Dollar earnings from 23.2 to 23.8 billion US Dollars from 2007 to 2008 and that tourist arrivals grew by 2% between the same years.
So, even through times of recession, particularly affecting its major markets of North America and Europe, the Caribbean held firm and maintained steady if unspectacular growth. In the WTO Report ‘Tourism 2020 Vision’ the organisation forecasts that the Americas, including the Caribbean, will experience an increase of 92 million arrivals between 2010 and 2020 and will enjoy an average annual growth rate between 1995 and 2020 of 3.9%.
In terms of the Caribbean, this has the potential to see that steady growth continue, particularly when the established visitors from North America and Europe recover from recession and once again return to their traditional Caribbean holiday destinations.
Although many Caribbean islands still rely to a smaller degree on locally grown produce, such as Grenada with its many spices, tourism has become the new currency for much of the Caribbean region.
Copyright Mike Withey. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
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