Above: Bridgetown (CJ Photo)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Barbados will host the OAS Travel Congress next year, the first time the event will be held in an English-speaking Caribbean country.

The forum, which is being held this year in Honduras, has previously been hosted in Ecuador and El Salvador.

The news was announced following the signing of a tourism cooperation agreement between Barbados, the OAS and the Caribbean Tourism Organization.

“This is the first time that the Travel Congress will be held in the English-speaking Caribbean, and this demonstrates the desire for the OAS to get out to the English-speaking members of this hemispheric grouping that tend not to be active as they ought,” said Barbados Tourism Minister Richard Sealy.

The Minister said the relationship would “bring real benefit.”

“As we become closer, we are not only speaking about the Caribbean Basin or the rim of the basin, but also further afield throughout the entire hemisphere,” he said.

CTO Secretary General Hugh Riley, who signed the agreement in Bridgetown, said the OAS had been a “staunch and long-standing supporter of the region and the work of the CTO and this kind of collaboration and cooperation from an agreement such as this really helps to embody the whole notion of one Caribbean.”

The first four-year agreement between Barbados, the CTO and the OAS was signed in 1976.