Barbados has a new Minister of Tourism, following a cabinet reshuffle by Prime Minister Mia Mottley. 

Senator Lisa Cummins is the country’s new Tourism Minister, succeeding former Tourism Minister Kerrie Symmonds, who is now the country’s Minister of Energy. 

“This is an interesting and perhaps the most challenging time to take up the portfolio of tourism, but it is perhaps also the most exciting time to be able to do that,” Cummins said. 

When the challenges are before you, that is the most interesting time and the most creative time to cover any issue and certainly to cover any sector,” she said. “So I’m looking forward to taking up the challenge of tourism.

With global tourism “pretty much ground to a halt,” she said, the Ministry will take “the opportunity to retool, retrain, refashion, up-skill, and reposition.”

“We will strategize; create new tactical approaches, so that by the time international travel, gets rolling, again, we’re hoping that Barbados will emerge in a space that we could not have anticipated as a result of a challenging time that forces us to be at our most innovative,” she said. 

Barbados officially reopened its borders for tourism on July 12. 

— CJ