Can Unspoiled Dominica Keep Its Charm?
Jonathan B. Tourtellot
National Geographic Traveler
November 7, 2003
TravelWatch is produced by the geotourism editor for National Geographic Traveler magazine, Jonathan B. Tourtellot. TravelWatch focuses on sustainable tourism and destination stewardship. This column, updated for National Geographic News, appeared originally in the print magazine. Look for TravelWatch every other Friday.
I'm sharing a taxi from Dominica's rudimentary Melville Hall airport with a Colorado woman who spends months sailing the eastern Caribbean with her husband. What do they think of Dominica?
"It's one of our favorite islands. The scenery. … It's so unspoiled. The reefs are still pristine. And the people. …" She gropes for words, repeats, "It's unspoiled."
By luck, not design. So I learn when I join a team of tourism graduate students from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. I'm here to eavesdrop on their masters project: a ten-day "rapid assessment" of Dominica's tourism problems and opportunities. My interest is personal; I covered the 29-mile-long (47-kilometer-long) island for National Geographic Traveler six years ago, wondering then, could this place really stay unspoiled?
Dominica is not like other Caribbean islands, and most emphatically not like the homonymous Dominican Republic. The Commonwealth of Dominica (dah-min-EE-ka) speaks English, not Spanish; lies in the Lesser Antilles, not Greater; and looks more Hawaiian than Caribbean. Its lush, wildly crumpled landscape, festooned with waterfalls, includes mountains that rise to 4,747 feet (1,447 meters). It's got unjaded, friendly people. It's got low prices. It's got the world's only Carib Indian reserve. It's got rare parrots, scuba diving, whale-watching, Shangri-la views, and possibly the best-known hike in the Caribbean—the three-hour trek to the volcanically heated Boiling Lake. Reasonably enough, it's been promoting itself as the Caribbean's Nature Island.
Its economy, however, is suffering, thanks partly to a successful U.S. campaign to remove European Union banana subsidies on which the tiny country has relied. Now Dominica needs visitors more than ever, yet it has no jetport, few beaches, no big hotels, and no significant shopping.
Enter the George Washington team. When I join them this evening on the veranda at the little Hummingbird Inn, they're comparing notes from their first week of tourism-assessing.
"The dive sites were phenomenal," says Luis. Others agree.
"But there's a major trash and turbidity problem at the shoreline," points out Catherine.
"Most tourists will be turned off by that," concurs professor Donald Hawkins, the leader. He asks about a proposed trail system. Could Dominica be an adventure destination?
"They'll need better marketing," says Scott. "I follow the dive literature, for instance, and I had no idea this place existed."
"We went on a hike to the southeast coast at Glaci Boetica," says Rob. "It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. No tourist would know it's there."
"Nobody knows about it here either," rejoins his wife, Julie. The country lacks systematic information about its own attractions.
Someone notes an image problem: The whale-watching Nature Island votes with Japan to support, hmm, whaling. Uncoincidentally, Japan has funded assorted facilities near Roseau, the capital.
The Dominican government also continues to woo cruise ships, even though they seem to be heavy-hoofed cows with no milk. One study says that cruise lines supplied 54 percent of the island's visitors, who inundate sights like the charming Emerald Pool, but the ships accounted for only 5 percent of visitor expenditures. Roseau is not a shopping town, so up to half the passengers don't even get off the ship, Hawkins reports, and of those who do, half don't buy anything and go back to the boat for lunch.
The next day, I meet Lennox Honychurch, anthropologist, historian, and unofficial national critic. Despite the "Nature Island" billing, he complains, the island has ineffective waste management, no ecotourism certification program, and inadequate training for park rangers and would-be innkeepers. I remark that at least the little second-floor national museum near the waterfront in Roseau must get cruise passengers. Wrong. Honychurch, radiating frustration, imitates an American accent: "Oh, honey, I don't want to climb those stairs."
Honychurch is no less frustrated with his own countrymen, among whom a scheme-of-the-moment mentality persists—the aerial tram, for instance. In 1997, Dominica won a coveted World Heritage listing (see related story) for its rugged, jungly Morne Trois Pitons National Park, home to the Boiling Lake. Soon thereafter, a Canadian businessman proposed building an aerial tram to the lake for cruise ship passengers. It would short-circuit the famous hike, overburden the pond-size lake site, and spoil the wildness of the landscape. The government approved it. Only after World Heritage officials said that the plan would endanger the park's prized new status did the government agree to keep the tram route outside the park. Construction proceeded, and last month the new Rain Forest Aerial Tram opened to the public, bringing visitors on a one-mile (1.6-kilometer) ascent along the park border.
The students are discovering failed projects lying around the island like beached whales. A sprawling hotel conference center in the middle of the island rises from high grass, abandoned. Misspent international aid has funded overbuilt visitors centers next to small natural attractions—the classic "edifice complex"—while little if any support goes to training local guides and rangers. Aid loans built new small hotels unencumbered by research on what visitors actually want: The buildings hug the busy road, Dominican style, their backs to the island's gorgeous views.
Several students and I inspect the silliest misstep of all, on the Carib Indian Reserve, high on the rugged eastern coast. The Indians have long wanted to create a historically accurate, 15th-century Carib village for educating visitors. Somehow, this admirable project ended up in the hands not of the Indians, not of anthropologists, but of government engineers. Their priority was to meet a standard development-loan requirement: All structures must be hurricane-proof.
The resulting village? Let's just say that hurricane-proof, 15th-century palm-frond huts require lots of concrete.
Yet just up the road, a Carib mom-and-pop operation called Karina Village does arrange to showcase authentic Carib culture—dance, music, and crafts. Small attractions like Karina could probably make much better use of foreign aid, but to get it, Dominica's tour operators, ecolodges, and community groups need to work together far more effectively.
So says the fat report I receive weeks later from the George Washington University team. Dominica, they recommend, should develop health and spa tourism, accented with Caribbean natural-foods cuisine; true ecotourism, with conservation and community benefits; heritage tourism, with Carib Indian participation; and adventure travel—hiking, diving, and an adventure marathon event. Being a mite older and wearier than the students, I would add one more: scenic R and R. Few islands have more places so perfect for relaxing in front of a drink, a book, and a fabulous view.
That's why, when I saw the sign in the airport departure lounge—THANKS FOR VISITING OUR NATURE ISLAND. COME AGAIN—I thought, well, yes, I probably will.