Operations

Ministry of Trade and Industry

Republic of Trinidad and Tobago

Commonwealth Secretariat

SMALL STATES IN TRANSITION – FROM VULNERABILITY TO COMPETITIVENESS

ST LUCIA

STRATEGIC APPROACH TO TOURISM AS AN EXPORT AND

DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY IN SMALL STATES

Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago – January 2004

Introduction:

Saint Lucia as a small island state has witnessed positive growth in tourism in recent

years to the extent that this sector has effectively replaced agriculture as the lead

contributor to the Gross Domestic Product. However there is growing concern about

the future of tourism both in terms of global developments and the need to safeguard

and maximize its development potential.

The stated proposition signifies a major shift in the traditional approaches to tourism

development in Saint Lucia. Moreover it challenges the current concepts and

practices towards national development planning and export strategy formulation in

particular.

Most Small States (Saint Lucia included) are still quite immature in export strategy

formulation as a national development planning exercise even though strategic

planning for tourism development has advanced significantly. The stated proposition

therefore constitutes a threefold challenge to the small Island state. These

challenges can be delineated as follows:

1. Refining and strengthening the strategic planning framework for export

development to adequately integrate tourism.

2. Changing the existing strategic planning framework for tourism development

to an export oriented approach

3. Finding the most appropriate mechanisms for fusing the above two

endeavors or approaches so that tourism becomes the core of a national

development strategy based on export development.

The ensuing sections of this Technical Paper addresses challenge number 2 above,

by highlighting some of t e critical issues that small islands like Saint Lucia must

h

address in achieving the requisite paradigm shift in tourism planning i.e. to effectively...