As the government gears up to host a tourism summit next week, the completion target for a long-delayed national tourism plan has been pushed forward again — this time until at least October, according to Premier Natalio “Sowande” Wheatley.
The premier, who is also the minister of tourism, had promised the House of Assembly last January that the plan would be delivered by the end of 2024.
But he told the Beacon on Dec. 28 that it is now set to be developed following the summit, which will be held on Jan. 16-17 at the newly relaunched Peter Island Resort (see sidebar).
“We are going to do a policy first,” Mr. Wheatley said at the resort’s re-opening ceremony on Dec. 28, adding that the policy is scheduled to be complete by mid-2025. “Part of the policy will be informed by this tourism summit, and then when that policy is finished, we are going to move on to develop a strategy. We want to get it ahead of the next tourism season: October, somewhere around there.”
Successive governments have been promising a new national tourism plan at least since 2011, but none delivered it. Asked about the delays, Mr. Wheatley said the government wants to ensure it does things right.
“We have been discussing the components which need to be in place to be able to have a properly executed plan,” he said. “We want the industry to be involved, so we have the [BVI Yachting, Hotel and Tourism Association] involved. We are going to have the summit that will facilitate everyone in tourism to be involved in a collaborative process.”
Decade of delays
As the plan has been delayed repeatedly in recent years, industry stakeholders have increasingly called for a strategy that will strike a better balance between the yachting, resort-and-villa, and cruise-ship subsectors.
When the National Democratic Party came to power in 2011, its leaders promised to replace the previous tourism strategy introduced in the 1990s.
Until his retirement in 2019, then-premier Dr. Orlando Smith continued to push the idea, which was also included in the Recovery to Development Plan that his government published shortly after Hurricane Irma devastated the territory.
The plan stated, “The first step to revisioning and repositioning the tourism industry for the future is the development of a national tourism strategy in 2018.”
In early 2018, then-BVITB chairman Russell Harrigan — the majority owner and publisher of this newspaper — said the BVITB was seeking $800,000 to create the plan.
That November, then-tourism director Sharon Flax-Brutus said the BVITB was committed to completing it by early 2019.
“Work has already begun on this project,” she said at the time, adding that the plan would include a renewed push toward urging residents to visit the sister islands.
However, no draft was made public, and Ms. Flax-Brutus resigned in May 2020 after a new government came to power in February 2019 under then-premier Andrew Fahie.
Consultant
In 2021, Mr. Fahie promised that a draft plan would be completed by the end of that year. That didn’t happen either, but after a tender process, Cabinet decided in March 2022 to award a contract to create the plan to the New York-based public relations firm 5W PR, according to a Cabinet summary published at the time.
The firm was to be paid $1,971,556 in three equal instalments of $657,185 for a duration of three years, the summary stated. That contract, however, was later put on hold for reasons that weren’t explained in detail to the public.
After Mr. Wheatley became premier in 2022, he continued to promise a plan, and in January 2024 he told the HOA that he expected it to be delivered by the fourth quarter of last year.
He also said the government had been involved in consultations with the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States about creating a regional tourism policy.
Without a plan in place to guide the sector’s development, the government has come under fire over a surge in cruise ship passengers in recent years.
The first six months of 2024 set a tourism record, bringing the most total visitor arrivals of any first half in Virgin Islands history and causing the premier to express “delight” in the “historic performance” under his government. But the record was driven mostly by a dramatic post-pandemic surge in cruise ship passengers, while overnight visitor numbers for the first half of the year were nearly 24 percent below their 2017 first-half peak of about 243,000.
During the budget debate last month, opposition members in the HOA raised concerns about this dynamic and called for a tourism plan to guide the way forward.
