Jamaica Urges Creation of Global Tourism “Resilience Fund”

Jamaica Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett is urging the creation of a global truism resilience fund to support tourism-dependent nations in periods of disruption.

The call came amid the Jamaica-hosted Global Tourism Resilience Conference in Kingston this week. 

“While we talk about building resilience for tourism, we have to focus on the wider perspective on social, economic, political, health and security disruptions,” said Bartlett, who has spearheaded Jamaica’s resilience push, including the creation of a global tourism resilience center. That center, the first of its kind, was created back in 2019.

The biggest priority, Bartlett said, was to build capacity to “predict, mitigate, manage disruptions when they arise, recover quickly and to thrive thereafter.”

One idea the Minister broached was to create a the option for a “voluntary resilience tip” from the nearly 1.4 billion travelers around the world. 

“That contribution stays in the recipient countries [to] build that fund to enable capacity for resilience,” he said. “We as an industry have the capacity to enable this fund to happen seamlessly because we are the most consumption-driven activity on planet earth.”