Experts call for inclusive approach to Caribbean tourism

Brent Pin­heiro

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The Caribbean wel­comed 35 mil­lion vis­i­tors in 2025, ac­cord­ing to the Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CTO), once again sur­pass­ing pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els. But did every vis­i­tor tru­ly feel wel­come in the re­gion? That’s the ques­tion Roni Weiss, the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Trav­el Uni­ty, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion work­ing to cre­ate a more di­verse and in­clu­sive trav­el in­dus­try, is putting to des­ti­na­tions.

In a sit-down in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at the CTO’s re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Sus­tain­able Tourism Con­fer­ence in Be­lize, Weiss ex­plained that the mod­ern trav­eller and their needs have changed. Mod­ern trav­ellers can be any com­bi­na­tion of dif­fer­ent­ly abled, be of a dif­fer­ent race/eth­nic­i­ty, iden­ti­fy as LGBTQ+, be a trav­eller of size, et cetera, Weiss said. And he ar­gues that meet­ing their needs is more than just about be­ing seen.

Draw­ing ref­er­ence to Maslow’s hi­er­ar­chy of needs mod­el, he said, “If we have di­etary re­stric­tions and we aren’t able to get the food we want, we’re not go­ing to have a good ex­pe­ri­ence. If we don’t drink al­co­hol and every­thing is cen­tred around that, we’re not go­ing to have a good ex­pe­ri­ence. If we don’t feel safe, and that could just be a gen­er­al feel­ing of un­safe­ness, or that could be be­cause of a spe­cif­ic as­pect of our iden­ti­ty, where we feel like we just are not safe for what­ev­er rea­sons, if we feel like we don’t be­long some­where, we’re not wel­come there, then why do we want to be there? And why would we re­turn?”

The US is a ma­jor source mar­ket for many Caribbean coun­tries, with Cana­da not far be­hind, Weiss said, and as des­ti­na­tions con­tin­ue to tar­get trav­ellers from those mar­kets, they will need to de­cide whether they are go­ing to ac­cept and cater to trav­ellers with dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties.

Da­ta from the In­ter­na­tion­al Gay and Les­bian Trav­el As­so­ci­a­tion (IGL­TA) es­ti­mates the LGBTQ+ tourism mar­ket to be worth over US$200 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly. But more than any­thing, peo­ple want to feel safe in a des­ti­na­tion, he said

“Yes, we’re talk­ing about same-sex cou­ples who al­so have fam­i­lies, but we’re al­so talk­ing about a fam­i­ly where their child iden­ti­fies as trans­gen­der. Are they go­ing to feel wel­come there?” Weiss asked.

“I think that’s a re­al­ly im­por­tant thing to un­der­stand about a big sub­set of Amer­i­can trav­ellers, which is they’re aware of those iden­ti­ties, es­pe­cial­ly if they’re a par­ent. They’re go­ing to be even more con­cerned about mak­ing sure that their kids feel safe and good about those trav­els,” he said.

And the de­liv­ery of ser­vice doesn’t have to be com­pli­cat­ed, Weiss ar­gues.

“If you do have a same-sex cou­ple com­ing and they’re check­ing in and you have a het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ple com­ing in, you’ve got to treat them the same way. You go, how many beds would you like? I don’t think we need to be in every­body’s heads or hearts to go, do you ap­prove of this? That’s not what this needs to be. It just needs to be, how are we ac­tu­al­ly treat­ing peo­ple with­in the lived sit­u­a­tions?” he said.

Di­rec­tor of Prod­uct at the Cu­ra­cao Tourist Board, An­dré Ro­jer, ex­plains that be­ing in­clu­sive has paid off. Cu­ra­cao record­ed a nine per cent in­crease in vis­i­tor ar­rivals com­pared to 2024, wel­com­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.7 mil­lion vis­i­tors in 2025. As a ful­ly au­tonomous coun­try with­in the King­dom of the Nether­lands, Ro­jer cred­its part of that suc­cess to the Dutch for their ap­proach to in­clu­siv­i­ty.

He said, “They are the front run­ners of in­clu­siv­i­ty and are ab­solute­ly wel­com­ing to LGBT [trav­ellers]...They don’t raise an eye­brow about that at all. It has been em­braced right away - pack­ages, tour op­er­a­tors, trav­el agents, in­flu­encers com­ing in.”

Ro­jer al­so ex­plained how he en­sures the des­ti­na­tion re­mains ac­ces­si­ble for dis­abled trav­ellers.

“We did a full scan of all prop­er­ties on the is­land and made sure that they have all of the phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged adap­ta­tions need­ed, how many rooms per ho­tel are adapt­ed,” he said.

We even went fur­ther to parks, recre­ation­al places, and tours. So we look at the dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies now to make sure all those things are in place. Those are the small el­e­ments that are im­por­tant.”

Ac­cord­ing to UN Tourism, 1.3 bil­lion peo­ple al­ready ex­pe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant dis­abil­i­ty, but dis­abled peo­ple aren’t ex­act­ly stay­ing home. A 2024 study by the Open Doors Or­ga­ni­za­tion found that dis­abled US trav­ellers spend near­ly US$50 bil­lion on trav­el an­nu­al­ly. Add in a trav­el com­pan­ion for care/com­pa­ny, and that fig­ure dou­bles to over $100 bil­lion per year.

Gré­goire Dumel, lo­cal and re­gion­al man­ag­er at the Saint-Mar­tin Tourist Board, told Guardian Me­dia that while the mar­ket seg­ment might be small, the des­ti­na­tion has been mak­ing strides to­wards cater­ing for all trav­ellers. Us­ing the is­land’s build­ing code as an ex­am­ple, he point­ed out that a por­tion of all ho­tels’ ground units are de­signed to cater for dis­abled users. Even some­thing as sim­ple as dial­y­sis treat­ment, he says, has been tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

“We have over two mil­lion vis­i­tors by cruise on the is­land, and a lot of them, when they ar­rive in St Mar­tin, [need] dial­y­sis be­cause for dial­y­sis, you’ve got to be able to do it every two or three days. Ac­cord­ing to the des­ti­na­tions they will be vis­it­ing, they’re go­ing to make sure that there is a dial­y­sis point.

“They can’t do it on the ship. So they will come down, and they will do it in St Mar­tin, for three to four hours, and then go back to the ship,” he said.

Dumel ad­mits, how­ev­er, that more can be done.

He said, “Ramps at the beach­es, all our park­ing ar­eas—if you’re do­ing 20 park­ing spaces, there will be four or five park­ing spaces for [hand­i­capped per­sons]. So it’s some­thing that is al­ready in the sys­tem... but I think as a tourism au­thor­i­ty, there’s much more that we can do to make sure that those vis­i­tors or tourists are as wel­come as an [able-bod­ied] per­son.”

Trav­el and tourism con­tributed US$11.6 tril­lion to glob­al GDP in 2025, rep­re­sent­ing 9.8 per cent of the glob­al econ­o­my, ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the World Trav­el and Tourism Coun­cil (WTTC). So for Weiss, the mes­sage to stake­hold­ers is sim­ple: “If you have any sort of eco­nom­ic in­ter­est in tourism, you want to make sure that peo­ple have a good ex­pe­ri­ence, feel like peo­ple cared about them, be­cause that’s how they re­turn and tell oth­er peo­ple that they should too.”