It is no secret that Caribbean Tourism has been severely impacted by the COVID-19 health crisis. Further, the decline in tourism activity has negatively impacted the region’s growth prospects and led to unprecedented spikes in unemployment. Economists in IDB’s Caribbean department have described the COVID-19 shock to tourism as an “unprecedented extreme outlier event,” and it’s believed that government interventions to support the sector and their citizens must be equally unparalleled.

In this second podcast in the series "Tourism in the Caribbean: Stories from the field during COVID-19," IDB Group Country Representative for Barbados, Juan Carlos De La Hoz Viñas, explores what it will take to reactivate the Tourism industry in the Caribbean. Viñas is joined by Vanessa Ledesma-Berrios, Chief Operations Officer, Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), Neil Walters, Acting Secretary General, Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO), and Sylvia Dohnert, Executive Director, Compete Caribbean, and Private Sector Lead Specialist, IDB.

To access resources from this podcast please visit www.onecaribbean.org, www.caribbeanhotelandtourism.com, www.competecaribbean.org and our Caribbean regional hub https://devtrends.iadb.org/en.

This podcast was produced by Yajaira Archibald, Communications Consultant, IDB, Terry-Ann Coley-Graham, Social Media Editor, IDB, and Ariel McCaskie, Economics Consultant, IDB.