Sports Tourism and political ole talk

9

For some time we have been hearing different sporting organisations as well as politicians raise the issue of sports tourism here in St Vincent and the Grenadines.  The reality reveals that there is no seriousness on the part of the authorities here to embark on a sports tourism thrust in any significant way.

 

René and Mike

Some time ago the then Minister of Tourism and Culture, René Baptiste, returned from one of her trips abroad and took to the airwaves to inform the nation of her seemingly new awareness of something called sports tourism. Shortly thereafter, the Minister seemed to have wanted us to believe that she was serious about this aspect of development enough to organise a symposium at the Peace Memorial Hall.

For some strange reason some came away from that symposium with the understanding that Michael Findlay was being given some sort of responsibility, however nebulous, for aiding the Government here in establishing some sort of sports tourism focus.

We have heard nothing since the symposium concluded.

None of this is surprising.

In the first instance the symposium was hastily called. The Minister did not seem to have had any grounding in what constitutes sports tourism and therefore was not in any position to realistically provide some sense of direction in this regard.

None of the participants in the symposium from St Vincent and the Grenadines would have had time to prepare themselves to make meaningful contributions to the activity. They were mere passive onlookers and patient listeners to an activity that was not at all well planned.

As the old people say, Wes Hall, one of the invited persons, could have preached until Peter turned Paul, it would not and could not have made any difference to the situation here.