Tourism consultant and CEO of KHADZ Communications (KHADZCOMM) Khadine Daley will be a guest speaker at the 5th Annual Caribbean Tourism Career Accelerator (Regional Edition), which is being powered by the Global Startup Foundation in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB Lab), Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) among others.

The accelerator is a month long-event, which began earlier this month on May 5, and is the Caribbean’s first and largest Digital Career Workforce Program created to engage, train, and prepare youth professionals for jobs of the future tourism. The free multi-week training and subsequent internship programme will feature over 100-plus partners to include: tourism stakeholders, corporate partners and government affiliates from across the region.

“I am truly honoured and excited to be among a group of leading tourism professionals from across the globe to bring insights and a fresh perspective on the future of tourism within the Caribbean. With Caribbean destinations thriving post-pandemic, there is a renewed focus on innovation, sustainable practices and the development of non-traditional skills that are required for this new era of tourism. This opens up countless opportunities for young professionals to make their mark in the industry,” said Daley.

The accelerator project is aimed to implement a remote career training program to address talent pipeline scarcity, industry development issues including data limitation on successful case studies on talent development and recruitment, and financial freedom issues as more people find job placements over time.

Daley, who has over 23 years of experience in travel and tourism, is also the founder of Caribness Curated, a Caribbean travel brand ambassador digital platform, emphasised that she will use the opportunity to highlight the emergence of new opportunities in the areas of technology and sustainable tourism.

“As the industry evolves, these new and emerging careers are becoming increasingly important,” she said, adding that the use of foreign language as a skill is a lasting problem among Caribbean nationals that needs to be addressed.

“I have been given the task the share insights and explore the trends and innovations shaping the tourism landscape. As such, I will use the opportunity to also highlight the growing trends in health and wellness, adventure and sports tourism, as well as agri-tourism. The Caribbean workforce must become advanced in these areas to ensure readiness and to cope with globalisation influences, ” she said.

Other top-listed speakers include: Natalia Bayona, director of the Innovation, Education, and Investments Department at World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Chip Rogers, president and CEO, American Hotel and Lodging Association (AH&LA); Dr Iva Bahunek, CEO, Croatian National Tourism Board; Petia Abdur-Razzaaq, digital trainer, Google; Christine Ntim, CEO, Global Startup Ecosystem; Mike Hampton, Florida International University’s Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, USA; Professor Xavier Font, sustainability marketing, School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at University of Surrey, UK; Dr Kelly Bricker, vice-chair, Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC); Professor Kathleen P. Pittman, University of Utah; and Rob Paterson, founder, Grand Equity.

The training programme will be completely virtual using automation, artificial intelligence, and connectivity to fast-track tourism workforce career development for 1,000 applicants.