Brent Pin­heiro

The Caribbean wel­comed 35 mil­lion vis­i­tors in 2025, ac­cord­ing to the Caribbean Tourism Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CTO), once again sur­pass­ing pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els. But did every vis­i­tor tru­ly feel wel­come in the re­gion? That’s the ques­tion Roni Weiss, the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Trav­el Uni­ty, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion work­ing to cre­ate a more di­verse and in­clu­sive trav­el in­dus­try, is putting to des­ti­na­tions.

In a sit-down in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at the CTO’s re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Sus­tain­able Tourism Con­fer­ence in Be­lize, Weiss ex­plained that the mod­ern trav­eller and their needs have changed. Mod­ern trav­ellers can be any com­bi­na­tion of dif­fer­ent­ly abled, be of a dif­fer­ent race/eth­nic­i­ty, iden­ti­fy as LGBTQ+, be a trav­eller of size, et cetera, Weiss said. And he ar­gues that meet­ing their needs is more than just about be­ing seen.