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Small Islands Voice Global Forum
Small is beautiful
Tourism is a vitally important industry for many, if not most small, tropical islands. Investment and the needs of up-market clientele as well as the mass tourism market has been the subject of discussion on this forum. Here are some further views from Zanzibar and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Zanzibar today is famous for a number of beautiful, well-managed, ecologically and culturally sensitive hotels and lodges, writes Sibylle Riedmiller. In the early nineties, investors rescued and restored historical buildings and sites that would otherwise have been demolished, developed original architectural styles based on local materials and traditions, trained local people for the tourism industry and now play an important role in marketing Zanzibar.
Many of these investors are foreigners, because it seems that in developing countries, especially when they start opening-up to the world, you sometimes need to come from an over-developed and industrialised western country to appreciate the value and richness of the non-western culture and local traditions, and the beauty of tropical nature in its raw untamed state! In contrast, local investors sometimes believe ‘development’ means doing away with all that.
These small and medium hotels in Zanzibar were established when the country had just opened up for foreign investment and tourism. Though highly popular with individual tourists, ironically they would have no chance to be approved by the government today, for the minimum sum required for foreign investments in tourism in Zanzibar is US $ 4 million. So now we see the big players in the international tourism industry being favoured by the government, who are beginning to turn Zanzibar into another faceless ‘sun, sea and sand’ destination.
Official administrative practice in most government departments also makes life very hard for small and medium investors, both local and foreign. Investors struggle with awkward bureaucratic requirements and confusing regulations for investment approval, land lease, building permits, immigration and labour laws, taxes, fees and licenses. This encourages corruption and delays operations. Small and medium investors simply cannot afford the time and money needed for dealing with that, while the bigger corporations easily buy themselves into the system and employ a full-time person to deal with the bureaucracy.
What could bring about a change of policy? Hard to say, hopefully, discussions like this help create awareness among decision-makers of small island states, to learn from each other before the same mistakes are repeated elsewhere over and over again.
Peter Jacobs from St. Vincent and the Grenadines writes about the problems that occurred when the former government leased most of the island of Canouan to a large company for tourism development. There was work for some of our people, but by far the company profited the most. Local residents were stopped from going to certain beaches when there were guests at the hotel, and sometimes even when the guests were not there. Court cases resulted and roads were blocked, visitors felt unwelcome and now the project is at a halt. Our governments must be more responsible to the people on whose behalf they make decisions.
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