That's a nugget found on Al Jazeera this morning.
The implication being if these countries rolled out the Pride carpet and embraced queer tourism, those billions would be ripe for the plucking. The study was conducted by an outfit called Open for Business. As you can see by the list of corporate sponsors on p.5, a crowd of A -list money grubbers like that makes you wonder if they're motivated by helping Caribbean economies or fattening their own bottom lines.
Mass tourism of the type that inflicts itself on the countries in question doesn't do much for the hosts. It typically displaces local development initiatives in favour of foreign controlled investments that will repatriate the profits out of the area. It is almost always a boon to a small local elite and their foreign backers, while increasing the dependency of the country as a whole and further immiserating the local work force.
Even if these societies made a concerted effort to woo gay tourists, they have another problem; crime. The most peaceable among them have crime rates exponentially higher than the affluent countries gay tourists come from. How about these murder rates in some of the favourite tourist destinations:
Trinidad & Tobago 30 per 100,000 pop.
St. Kitts 34
Jamaica 47
The Canadian stat is 1.8 per 100,000. Who wants to holiday in a country where you're 2000% more likely to be murdered than at home?
While the reluctance of gay tourists to visit these countries may leave a few billions on the table, I can't see this changing in the foreseeable future. Gays are just way too smart.
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