Last week Jamaica welcomed the global travel industry for World Travel Week. We hear from the leaders and winners of World Travel Awards 2026 reflecting on the people, places and shared determination that keep tourism moving forward.
Tourism is built around the promise of discovery: new places, shared experiences and the possibility of seeing the world differently. Yet behind every journey lies an industry that must continually adapt to uncertainty, recover from disruption and find reasons to look forward.
At the World Travel Awards Caribbean & The Americas Gala Ceremony 2026 in Jamaica, that determination was evident in the words of industry leaders and award-winning businesses. Their messages ranged from the importance of human connection and genuine hospitality to the resilience of destinations facing profound challenges.
The ceremony also offered an opportunity to recognise the people who make travel meaningful: the hotel teams, guides, drivers, chefs, travel advisers and countless others whose work turns a visit into a lasting memory.
For World Travel Week, their experiences offer a reminder that tourism’s greatest strength lies in its ability to bring people together, create opportunity and keep moving forward.
An industry built on human connection
Opening the ceremony, World Travel Awards founder Graham Cooke paid tribute to the people whose dedication sustains the global tourism industry. He highlighted the contribution of hotel managers, frontline teams and hospitality workers, whose “passion and human connection creates unforgettable guest experiences”.
It is a simple idea with far-reaching consequences. Travel may be driven by destinations, attractions and the desire to explore, but the memories people carry home are often shaped by personal encounters: a welcome that makes them feel at home, a guide who shares a place’s history, or a member of staff who goes out of their way to help.
For Lancelot Lebert, General Manager of Beaches Negril, the relationship between staff and guests is central to hospitality. His advice was direct: “The recipe is very simple. Take care of the staff. The staff will take care of kids.”
Enrico Pezzoli, Managing Director of Princess Hotels, Resorts and Casino, similarly emphasised the importance of passion and training. Reflecting on the development of a relatively new resort, he said: “We really wanted to bet on the idea of training.”
He described passion as a defining ingredient in success, pointing to the commitment his team brings to each guest experience.
These perspectives speak to something that can be overlooked amid discussions of investment, infrastructure and visitor numbers. Tourism is an international business, but its impact is felt person to person. Looking after the people who deliver the experience helps create the conditions for visitors to feel welcome, valued and eager to return.
Jamaica: looking forward with determination
As host destination for the ceremony, Jamaica provided a powerful setting for a discussion about the future of tourism. The island’s identity is closely connected to its hospitality, culture and capacity to welcome visitors, while its tourism sector continues to navigate disruption and changing international conditions.
Edmund Bartlett, Jamaica’s tourism minister, used his address to highlight the country’s recovery and its wider commitment to tourism resilience. He described tourism as “an industry of happiness and […] joy”, linking the sector’s contribution to the experiences it creates as well as the economic opportunities it supports.
Bartlett also reflected on Jamaica’s response to major disruptions, including the Covid-19 pandemic, and the importance of building stronger mechanisms to help destinations prepare for future crises.
He announced that the Global Tourism Resilience Award was due to be inaugurated at a forthcoming World Travel Awards event in Abu Dhabi, alongside an announcement concerning initial contributions to the Global Tourism Resilience Fund, an initiative Jamaica has advocated.
The message reaches beyond a single destination. Tourism can be vulnerable to events that lie outside the control of individual businesses, from natural disasters to geopolitical instability and economic shocks. Resilience requires preparation, collaboration and a willingness to learn from experience.
For destinations whose communities depend on visitors for employment and livelihoods, recovery means more than welcoming tourists back. It means sustaining businesses, supporting workers and preserving the cultural and natural assets that make a place worth visiting.
The people who keep destinations moving
Across the winners’ interviews, a recurring theme was the importance of the people who bring a destination to life.
Owen Henry, Hotel Manager of Jamaica Inn, spoke about the property’s reputation for “showing that authentic Jamaican experience, that warmth, that charm”. He highlighted the importance of employing people who genuinely understand and care about the experience they are helping to create.
At a hotel with a long history, that sense of continuity carries particular significance. Hospitality becomes part of the destination’s story, passed between generations of staff and shared with visitors from around the world.
Lofton Ellison, representing Experience Turks and Caicos, also stressed that the visitor experience depends on people working throughout the tourism sector. From chefs to taxi drivers and immigration officers, he observed, the people visitors encounter can make a decisive difference through their willingness to smile, help and deliver excellent service.
Such interactions may appear small, but collectively they shape how visitors remember a country. They can encourage repeat visits, generate recommendations and strengthen the relationship between travellers and the communities they encounter.
Tourism’s human dimension is also what makes it capable of creating connections across cultures. Visitors arrive with different expectations and experiences; the people who welcome them have the opportunity to make those encounters meaningful.
Finding joy in the experience
The language of tourism often focuses on performance: arrivals, spending, investment and growth. These measures matter, particularly for economies where tourism supports employment and enterprise. Yet the industry’s appeal ultimately rests on something more personal.
People travel to celebrate, reconnect, explore, learn and experience a change of scene. They seek time with family and friends, encounters with unfamiliar places and moments that become part of their own stories.
Walter Zausch, Founder and CEO of Whiskey Thief Distilling Co., spoke about the importance of creating great products and memorable experiences. For him, success begins with hiring good people and giving them the conditions to do their best work. It also means offering visitors something they can enjoy and remember with the people who matter to them.
This principle extends across the visitor economy. A meal, a distillery visit, an island excursion or a stay at a much-loved hotel can become a lasting memory when the experience feels considered and distinctive.
That capacity to create joy is one of tourism’s most enduring strengths. It gives the industry a purpose beyond the transaction and helps explain why people continue to seek out new journeys, even during periods of uncertainty.
Moving forward in a changing world
The resilience of tourism also depends on its ability to adapt. During the ceremony, Graham Cooke acknowledged that the industry had sustained travel demand despite global trade tensions, inflationary pressures and elevated oil prices. The figures he presented pointed to continued international movement and growth across the Americas.
For travel businesses, navigating this changing landscape requires flexibility and a willingness to embrace new approaches. Dave Chin Tung, CEO of GO! Jamaica Travel, recognised that companies must engage with artificial intelligence and other technological developments, even when they appear daunting.
“A lot is changing, and a lot of travel companies have to change. We have to get into the AI field,” he said. “I know a lot of people are scared off. Scared of it. But […] we do have to make a try to do it as best as we can.”
His comments capture a broader challenge for the sector: to prepare for what comes next while retaining the human qualities that make travel valuable. Technology can change how journeys are planned and booked, but hospitality, local knowledge and personal connection remain central to the experience.
Adaptation is also about recognising the different needs of destinations and communities. Long-established hotels, new resorts, independent operators and travel companies face different pressures, but all must find ways to respond to changing expectations while maintaining the qualities that make their offer distinctive.
Keep travelling
World Travel Week is an opportunity to recognise the scale and diversity of the global tourism industry, but also to consider what keeps it moving forward.
The voices gathered in Jamaica point to a shared set of values: looking after people, welcoming visitors with warmth, creating experiences that bring joy, and building the capacity to recover and adapt when circumstances change.
Resilience is rarely the work of a single organisation or individual. It emerges through the efforts of workers, businesses, communities and destinations, supported by relationships that endure beyond any one season or crisis.
For Jamaica, welcoming the international travel industry provides an opportunity to celebrate its place on the world stage and to look towards the future with determination. For the wider industry, the message is equally relevant: there will always be challenges to navigate, but there will also be places to discover, people to meet and experiences worth sharing.
Tourism’s enduring promise is that the world remains open to connection and discovery. The work of sustaining that promise belongs to everyone who helps make a journey possible.
