More than 12 months after the territory’s business and tourism community introduced legislation for a private-public tourism authority, the St. Croix Chamber of Commerce on Monday urged that the proposal doesn’t get watered down.
In a special board meeting Monday, the St. Croix Chamber again called for the establishment of the proposed V.I. Tourism Authority, a board made up of individuals from both the private and public sectors.
Last November, members of the St. Croix and St. Thomas-St. John Chambers of Commerce, the St. Croix Hotel and Tourism Association, the St. Thomas-St. John Hotel Association and the St. Croix Accommodations Council finalized draft legislation that sought to reform tourism in the territory. The authority would develop long-range plans, coordinate and implement policy and marketing plans every three years and conduct market research, said Carmelo Rivera, interim president of the St. Croix Chamber.
The legislation, however, has languished, primarily because of opposition from within the government to relinquish control of overall tourism management.
Former Tourism Commissioner Rafael Jackson, who resigned in October after less than a year on the job, opposed the proposal. Meanwhile, Gov. Charles Turnbull has yet to name Jackson’s successor. Jackson was the third Tourism commissioner of Turnbull’s two-year-old administration.
Rivera, whose name has surfaced for the Tourism post, said the commissioner’s position needs to be depoliticized. The authority proposal would create an executive director position that would carry out policy set by board members.
"Tourism is too important for it to linger from election to election," he said of the Cabinet post that changes with each new administration.
In addition to the political nature of the Tourism post, the other reason for the Tourism Authority proposal is to separate the 8 percent hotel occupancy tax, which generates some $11 million a year, from the government general fund. Revenue from the tax is, by law, supposed to go toward marketing the territory's tourism product. But for several years the money has been used to meet the government's financial obligations.
Just last week, Edward Thomas, president and CEO of the West Indian Co. Ltd., tweaked the make up of the proposed authority so that the private sector element would act as an advisory panel. He said the main agencies of the authority should include the Public Finance Authority, V.I. Port Authority and the Tourism Department. The directors would be the chairman of the PFA, WICO, VIPA and the commissioner of Tourism.
Thomas said the mission of the authority would include:
– Determining how much of WICO's annual dividend to the PFA should be used for tourism promotion.
– Determining what tourism infrastructure projects the Port Authority will construct.
– Determining how hotel occupancy funds are spent.
Rivera, however, maintained that the authority be weighted toward the business community because "much of what happens in the world of tourism happens in the private sector.
"Other states and jurisdictions usually are a collaboration of the public and private sectors," he said. "We should do the same to make tourism much more productive for us."
Several well-known tourist destinations like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Las Vegas have either private or public-private tourism organizations.
