Since the mid-2000s, the ability of the Caribbean tourism sector to generate rapid economic growth has been widely accepted by international financial institutionsm such as the IMF, World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. This seems to have occurred at the point at which it became apparent that services exports were starting to eclipse the export of goods and commodities in much of the region.
Despite this, and the now widespread recognition of the centrality of tourism to the Caribbean economy, development institutions continue to struggle to find sound data on which to undertake the analysis necessary to guide economic policy.
This is largely because the tools the region uses to measure tourism’s performance are still rudimentary and unreliable. So much so that decisions about pricing, taxation, competitiveness, and the possible impact that industry related decisions may have on national economic performance are all too often based on flimsy data.
