Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

“I would rather have 1 percent of 100 people than 100 percent of one person” – Famous Quotation

Think about this famous quotation; according to arithmetic, 100 X 1 = 1 X 100. The two sides of this equation amount to the same total. But strategy-wise, it is better for the “1 percent of 100 people”.

Why?

It is far easier to get people to elevate from 1 percent to contribute more – think 2 percent – but impossible to get a person to give more than 100 percent. So with a little effort, our formula can total to 200 (100 X 2). Maybe even more …

This is the strategy being proposed to reboot the industrial landscape of tourism for the Caribbean. The strategy employed by the 30 member-states is that they want “High Net Worth” tourists. The price point during the peak season are easily $500 per night at resort hotels. The flaw of this strategy is that the target population who can consume those prices is limited. This is Caribbean Tourism 1.0.

Caribbean Tourism 2.0 assumes that we can offer a great visitor experience to more people – middle class and working class – for lower prices. (See Appendix VIDEO). Imagine 5 beds rented for $100 per night. While the grand totals may be the same (1 X $500 = 5 X $100), the 2.0 approach creates a lot more economic spin-off opportunities than the 1.0 approach. 5 people, for example, eat more than 1 person; drink more rum; smoke more cigars; acquire more souvenirs; take more tours, etc.

We have many successful role models to consider. Think:

1. Orlando, Florida who hosts Disney World and Universal Studios – enjoys 75 million tourists each year. 
2. The tiny town of Sturgis, South Dakota annually hosts an 10-day event with over 500,000 attendees.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that the Caribbean industrial landscape must be reformed and transformed. Our Caribbean economic landscape is in shambles! Tourism is currently our primary economic driver in the region, and it is under assault; more and more visitors shift from stay-overs to cruise arrivals. Cruise packages are much cheaper than stay-overs – see photos here:

——————– Hotel Options ——————

———- Cruise Options (same dates) ———–

While cruises may be easier on the wallet, they are harder on our Caribbean economy. Having less tourist-stay-overs means less economic impact to the local markets – hotels, restaurants, taxis, souvenir retail sales, etc.. Jobs are at stake!

This cannot be ignored! As a region, we must reboot our industrial landscape and add more job-creating options.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); this is a confederation of all 30 member-states to execute a reboot of the Caribbean economic eco-system. The quest is to introduce best-practices so as to optimize the economic engines in the local communities.

On the surface, a strategy to trade services based on the Caribbean’s assets of sun, sand, surf and sea is not a BAD approach. The problem was embedded when the stakeholders developed a lazy attitude towards the delivery of such services. The stewards of the tourism product preferred to cater to the few “High Net Worth” individuals rather than the masses. They opted to get $100 from 1 person, rather than $1 from 100 people.

Unfair criticism?

Just notice the bad practices with air travel out of Caribbean airports – the taxes are more than the airfare.

This is the wrong community ethos; defined as:

“the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period” – Go Lean book Page 20

A change to the community ethos is the first advocacy of this new Reboot Tourism 2.0 endeavor. This “High Net Worth” first strategy is simply not working! The economic returns of the tourism status quo is simply not there!

Our cupboards are bare!

There are many more advocacies … depicted in the CU/Go Lean roadmap! In fact, the roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Rather than lazy; it is time for heavy-lifting. The Go Lean book stresses that reforming and transforming Caribbean tourism and the relevant local economic engines may be Too Big a burden for just one member-state alone; it must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

iv. Whereas the natural formation of the landmass is in a tropical region, the flora and fauna allows for an inherent beauty that is enviable to peoples near and far. The structures must be strenuously guarded to protect and promote sustainable systems of commerce paramount to this reality.

vi. Whereas the finite nature of the landmass of our lands limits the populations and markets of commerce, by extending the bonds of brotherhood to our geographic neighbors allows for extended opportunities and better execution of the kinetics of our economies through trade. This regional focus must foster and promote diverse economic stimuli.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, prefabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

This is what this CU/Go Lean roadmap has presented, a plan to …

• foster the development of new industries
• invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism

In fact, this commentary has previously identified a number of different industries that can be rebooted under this Go Lean roadmap. See the list of previous submissions on Industrial Reboots here:

1. Industrial Reboots – Ferries 101 – Published June 27, 2017
2. Industrial Reboots – Prisons 101 – Published October 4, 2017
3. Industrial Reboots – Pipeline 101 – Published October 5, 2017
4. Industrial Reboots – Frozen Foods 101 – Published October 6, 2017
5. Industrial Reboots – Call Centers 101 – Published July 2, 2018
6. Industrial Reboots – Prefab Housing 101 – Published July 14, 2018
7. Industrial Reboots – Trauma 101 – Published July 18, 2018
8. Industrial Reboots – Auto-making 101 – Published – July 19, 2018
9. Industrial Reboots – Shipbuilding 101 – Published – July 20, 2018
10. Industrial Reboots – Fisheries 101 – Published – July 23, 2018
11. Industrial Reboots – Lottery 101 – Published – July 24, 2018
12. Industrial Reboots – Culture 101 – Published – July 25, 2018
13. Industrial Reboots – Tourism 2.0 – Published Today – July 27, 2018

There is the need for an Industrial Reboot and we can apply this even in our Tourism offerings.

Do what we have always done; get what we have always got.

This is the urging of the movement behind the Go Lean book: Do something different! Apply different strategies, tactics and implementations to impact change to the tourism eco-system. We do not want to go backwards; forward only. So we want resort hotels to continue their business model and even improve upon it. But, we want to do more; to stand on the shoulders of all the current accomplishments – consider the possibility of doubling-down in our outreach to the Snowbirds market in the Appendix below – and reach ever greater heights.

How … do we accomplish this?

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society, including All-Things-Economic. There is a lot of consideration in the book for optimizing tourism, travel and transport across the Caribbean region. Notice these treatments from the book, in order of appearance:

• 10 Ways to Improve Sharing (Page 35)
  #9 – Bed & Breakfast (B&B) – Online & Mobile Reservations
  The B&B industry has emerged from family sharing their homes with strangers to near-high end resort facilities. All in all, it is basically residences sharing their hospitality with guests. The CU will facilitate the mobile eco-systems for more Caribbean homes to share “beds and meals”, especially during the peaks of event tourism (festivals, carnivals, fairs).
• 10 Ways to Improve Trade (Page 128)
  #8 – Tourism Enhancers
  A mission of the CU is to enhance the tourism prospects for the region. The CU will deploy the resources to attract back the Diaspora to repatriate to the islands. This includes the health delivery systems. This opens more opportunity for new markets; retirement/snowbirds, medical tourists, event tourists, High-End (One Percent) & Celebrity marketing, etc..
• 10 Ways to Enhance Tourism in the Caribbean Region (Page 190)
  #1 – Special Festival Events
  Promote multi-day events in the style of Sturgis (Appendix J on Page 288), Coachella, and Milwaukee’s SummerFest. The CU will liberalize the loitering laws, allow for camping & car/van sleeping, public showers, food trucks, open canister for alcohol, etc. (Jamaica’s SunFest is a start). To facilitate traffic, jurisdictional governments should grant temporary motorcycle licenses and arranged for optimal shipping logistics.
• 10 Ways to Impact Events (Page 191)
  #2 – Fairgrounds – Venues with Permanent and Temporary Facilities
  The CU will operate Fairgrounds with the charter of promoting and facilitating events year round and harvesting the economic benefits, civic pride and personal self-actualization. The fairgrounds can host existing events, if local authorities need bigger-better facilities – though the CU will not solicit such events so as not to undermine the historical significance. The CU holds law enforcement jurisdiction over the fairgrounds and will deputize “Rangers” for security.
• 10 Ways to Promote Fairgrounds (Page 192)
  #2 – Self-Governing Entities (SGE)
  The vision of CU fairgrounds entail SGE’s for their administration. With the zoning and jurisdictional independence, similar to Disney World in Florida, direct foreign investments would be incentivized. Similar to industrial parks, these fair parks will be able to contemplate public works projects as long as the business model (future income) is viable. Funding can be provided by means of the regional capital markets: municipal bonds and stock issuance.
• 10 Ways to Market Southern California (Page 194)
  #4 – Los Angeles County is one of the Richest Municipalities in the World
  Some cities are magnets for ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individuals, and the cities with the most of this wealthy class average approximately one in 3,075 people. Los Angeles is second on the list for UHNW; Wall Street-infused New York City is first. In addition to the entertainment industry and media moguls, the city is also a shipping/trade hub. The CU member-states and the region as a whole should target tourism marketing to go where the money is.
• 10 Ways to Improve Transportation (Page 205)
  #3 – Turnpike: Ferries
  For the most part, the CU member-states are islands thereby allowing for a viable means of transportation via sea navigation. By deploying ferries, the CU facilitates passenger travel for business and leisure, (see model – Appendix IC on Page 280)

The Go Lean book asserts (Page 257) that many jobs can be forged, if we adopt a different community ethos – spirit of a culture that informs the beliefs, customs and practices – and seek to produce, not just consume. The book details this count:

Tourism – New markets, opening new opportunities and new traffic; sharing: 30,000 

Events – Festivals and other event staff at CU Fairgrounds: 9,000  

Fairgrounds – Direct maintenance/support jobs at CU Fairgrounds: 10,000 

The Go Lean movement (book and blogs) prepares the Caribbean region for this new business model for Tourism 2.0. In addition to these new 49,000 industry jobs; there is also the reality of indirect jobs – unrelated service and attendant functions – at a 3.75 multiplier rate would add another 183,750 jobs.

This constitutes an industrial reboot … on an old economic engine.

The thought of new twists to enhance tourism is not new for this Go Lean roadmap; there have been a number of previous blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that referenced economic opportunities embedded in the new industrial footprint of hosting, catering and facilitating visitors to our region. See a sample list here:

In summary, our Caribbean tourism eco-system needs a reboot – we need to create more jobs and derive more value from our industrial investments. A better job-creation ability would help us to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. Failures in this endeavor is one of the reasons why so many Caribbean citizens have abandoned their beloved homeland, to seek refuge some where else.

Imagine the shame of greeting a clerk or maid with a strong Caribbean accent at a hotel in some foreign country – they left to go work a tourism-based job abroad. So sad! We must create a new economic landscape by rebooting our old industrial landscape.

Yes, we can … reboot our tourism landscape to 2.0, and create new jobs – and other economic opportunities.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this roadmap for economic empowerment. This vision – of a brighter tourism landscape – is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix – The Bottom Line on Snowbirds

A snowbird is someone from the U.S. Northeast, U.S. Midwest, Pacific Northwest, or Canada who spends a large portion of winter in warmer locales such as California, Arizona, Florida, Texas, the Carolinas, or elsewhere along the Sun Belt region of the southern and southwest United States, Mexico, and areas of the Caribbean.

Snowbirds are typically retirees, and business owners who have a second home in a warmer location or whose business can be easily moved from place to place, such as flea market and swap meet vendors. Some snowbirds carry their homes with them, as [RV’s or] campers (mounted on bus or truck frames) or as boats following the east coast Intracoastal waterway. In the past snowbirds were frequently wealthy with independent income who maintained several seasonal residences and shifted residence with the seasons to avail themselves of the best time to be at each location; this custom has declined considerably due to changing patterns of taxation and the relative ease of long-distance travel compared with earlier times.

Many of these “snowbirds” also use their vacation time to declare permanent residency in low- or no-tax income tax states (where the tax bases are augmented by high tourism taxes), and claim lower non-resident income taxes in their home states. Canadian snowbirds usually make sure they retain residency in Canada in order to retain health benefits.
Source: Book Go Lean…Caribbean Page 190.

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Appendix VIDEO – How to Travel to the Caribbean CHEAP – https://youtu.be/xHCoBZw1Qt0

IrixGuy’s Adventure Channel
Published on Jun 25, 2016 – How to travel to the Caribbean affordably. This is how to travel to the Caribbean on a budget. I hope that you enjoy this video and please share with others! Be sure to check out my other Caribbean travel advice videos too! #Caribbean #travel #how-to

Filmed with http://goo.gl/AXHBdZ camera. Edited with the following equipment http://goo.gl/63pfsh. Contains royalty-free music from YouTube Content Creator Audio Library.

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