From de Islands

It's amazing how many people think that island life is easy and laid back, and that we don't have a care in the world. Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

In recent times some people are now getting to experience island life as a result of the work travel visas, an initiative which is consequent of the pandemic we've been experiencing from early 2020 through to current in 2021. It impacted the globe, and NO ONE was prepared. 

They are realizing though that it's not all coconut water and rum with Caribbean edibles to eat all day long. Here we actually work, some quite hard. Many live here and hardly get to put their toes into the water at the beach, let alone even get to walk in the sand. 

Barbados was recently seen on a listing among the most expensive countries in the world. Yet, that does not mean that people here are rich or wealthy. 

Living on the islands, we have to pay twice as much to experience half as much. Fortunately, we tend to have a good work ethic which does not permit us to compromise the standards to which we have become accustomed. Are we where we need to be? No! Success is a journey, not a destination. 

As we reopen, visit the islands, there are no two alike, and experience the events, food, beverages, culture, arts, crafts, people, and sights. I have found and have often described "Barbados, my island home, as the pendant of the chain of islands, where you can fly over, drive through, sail around and dive under." 

That being said, I join with all the other citizens of the Caribbean and say, welcome to paradise, where the experiences you will have is from de islands. 

An Epidemic of Excellence

If we were to fight fire with fire, why couldn't we make an epidemic work for us as a region? With the recent pandemic fresh in our minds, we were able to see the impact it had on virtually every aspect of our society - commerce, trade, tourism and hospitality, healthcare, the environment and others. 

The tourism sector finally realizes that their locals are also people with spending power, and only now their backs are against the wall try to woo them in to use the products and services they sell. In many cases the locals, many of whom were treated badly before now reject them. It should be a wake up call for an industry that claims to offer hospitality, but only offered hospitality to people with foreign accents and foreign exchange. 

Hotels and restaurants clamour for industry recognised accolades of 5 star, green globe, luxury, prestigious, and the like; yet they lost to common touch of how to interact and treat their fellow citizens who work hard and save for vacations only to go overseas since they weren't appreciated in their own domicile. It's for this reason that Staycations may not have enjoyed more success than they could have. 

This was a discussion that many shared their thoughts on recently, and they were not complimentary to those who were hospitality practitioners. 

What can we do? We have to revamp the mindset of everyone in our countries.

As we learned, those of us who studied hospitality are no longer employed exclusively in tourism. We have gone into many diverse fields within which the what we learned in hospitality now plays an integral part in our careers.