Puerto Rico’s Tourism Governance and Resilience post Hurricanes Irma and Maria

Introduction

This paper, as part of my Master’s degree in Sustainable Destination Development at the Uppsala University, aims to understand Puerto Rico’s tourism governance and resilience post Hurricane Irma and Maria hit the island on September 2017.

Puerto Rico, officially known as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico) (Rivera, 2020) is an archipelago colonized by the Spanish on the 15th century and then became an unincorporated territory of the United States in 1898 and is considered the oldest colony in the world (Chinea, 1999, pp. 140–141). It is located northeast Caribbean Sea between the Dominican Republic and the British Virgin Islands (Lewis, 2017 in Delilah Roque et al 2020, p. 205). In the socioeconomic context, Puerto Rico faces a challenging economic reality, with its government bankrupt and owing U$70 billion (Warren, 2020), within the 3 million inhabitants on the archipelago, 45% of the population lives below the poverty levels and its population has been decreasing steadily in since 2008 due to the lack of employment opportunities (COR3, 2018 in in Delilah Roque, Pijawka & Wutich, 2020, p. 205). A lot of the workforce tend to move to the USA mainland to pursuit a better life. Despite Puerto Rico being a US territory, it doesn’t have the right to vote in presidency elections and neither has a vote in the U.S. Congress, which results in having little say in federal policies that have affected it (Border, 2020).

On September 20, 2017 the archipelago was devasted by the Hurricane Maria, that came two weeks after Hurricane Irma had already left Puerto Rico in a precarious situation. Maria was the first category 4 cyclone since 1932. Post Irma Hurricane the island was left two-thirds of the population without power, two weeks later when hit by Maria the electricity in the entire island was knocked out, along with cell phone towers and winds ripped building’s roofs off. Many people’s homes and businesses were destroyed and roads, water and phone services were not available. The number of deaths caused by the natural disaster was estimated at 2,975 (Warren, 2020).

The recovery post Hurricane Maria was slow, as the power in the island was only completely reinstated almost one year after in August 2018 and, as almost all buildings in the archipelago were damaged in some way, in July 2018, 4,000 hotel rooms out of 15,000 were still closed for renovations. (Warren, 2020 and Peltier, 2018). But Puerto Rico declared itself reopened for tourism 3 months after the disaster in December 2017, before the island barely had all services back (Warren, 2020).

The tourism industry accounts for 7.2% of Puerto Rico’s GDP (Foundation for Puerto Rico, 2020a) and in smaller islands that are part of the archipelago it can account for around 65% (Gulbrandson et al, 2019). The years previous to the hurricanes, were the most successful tourism years Puerto Rico had ever seen, with around 3.7 million tourists and almost 4 billion dollars in total spending in 2016. Most of Puerto Rico’s tourists are Americans, accounting for almost 90% of the arrivals in 2017 (Foundation for Puerto Rico, 2020a).

Tourism Governance

Previous to Hurricane Maria, the destination promotion was managed by the governmental agency Puerto Rico Tourism Company (PRTC). But a several months before the hurricanes, the “Act to Promote Puerto Rico as a Destination, act” was passed setting the stage for a boost in tourism investment. As a result, in July 2018, a new Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) was created: Discover Puerto Rico. As a private NGO it can develop a more consistent branding for the destination compared to previously when the destination marketing responsibilities were under a governmental agency, which caused the destination’s branding to change with each newly elected officials’ vision (Warren, 2020). This was proved to have positive outcomes for the recovery of the destination post Hurricane Maria, based on interviews provided by Brad Dean, the new DMO’s CEO (see Peltier, 2018; Talty, 2020 & Warren, 2020). With Discover Puerto Rico taking over the marketing responsibilities of the destination, Puerto Rico Tourism Company focus was changed to economic development projects for the island.

Other two major organizations involved in Puerto Rico Tourism development and that also made part of the islands recovery, was the Foundation for Puerto Rico, a non-profit founded in 2011 with the aim to create opportunities that drive social and economic development in Puerto Rico, with a focus on the visitor economy (Foundation for Puerto Rico, 2020b), and the Puerto Rico Hotel and Tourism Association (PRHTA), a trade association which represents the shared interests of more than 400 members, including hotels, restaurants, tour companies, suppliers of hospitality goods and others (Puerto Rico Hotel and Tourism Association, 2020).

Recovery Actions

Each organization presented above played a specific role in dealing with the recovery of Puerto Rico and its ability to bounce back from such devastating event, expect for the Puerto Rico Tourism Company (PRTC). In the interviews read for this paper, the governmental agency did not provide relevant information on their actions towards rebuilding the destination.

The newly stablished DMO Discover Puerto Rico, made aggressive efforts in marketing and promotion of the destination. The new tourism board set 70 percent of its budget towards sales, marketing, and promotion expenses, representing around 17.5M US dollars (Warren, 2020). As a start-up tourism board, they were looking at the island with new eyes and used the opportunity to play with the Puerto Rico’s strengths and use the Hurricane Maria as a springboard to put the destination in evidence in a positive way. The main efforts in promoting the destination were: a multimedia team travelled the island to take promotional photographs and videos to focus on building Puerto Rico’s social media presence, the DMO also invested in bringing large groups for meetings, conferences, and exhibitions. While the DMO did recognized the need to rebuild the island, it emphasized that just as important was letting tourists know that they were open for business. Aligned with this thought they launched the campaign #CoverTheProgress one year after Maria, with the aim to show travelers and the media the destination’s milestones in the recovery. The campaign proved to be successful, as 2019 was a record-breaking year, with 5.2 million visitor arrivals recorded. Moreover, it was possible to observe the efforts in promoting the island to different groups and niches, such as students and youth, luxury tourism and LGBTQ+ community (see Peltier, 2018; Chesnut, 2020 & Warren, 2020).

The trade association the Puerto Rico Hotel and Tourism Association (PRHTA) acted in the recovery by using the business networks to create new ways for the tourists to enjoy the island after the hurricanes, creating a space for small and large suppliers to show how travelers can connect to Puerto Rico in memorable and creative ways. Here can be highlighted how the association made use of co-opetition, that can result in a successful tourism network consisting of tourism businesses that work together in an interdependent balance (Beritelli, 2011 in Van der Zee & Vanneste, 2015, p. 52) in order to improve the quality of products offered in the destination.

Clarisa Jimenez, the association’s CEO highlighted businesses offering volunteer and community-based tourism by working closely with the local communities and entrepreneurs (Peltier, 2018). One innovative product offering that were born from the disaster was the campaign called “rebuild days” (Peltier, 2018), which encouraged voluntourism to dig out Camuy Cave Park or clean up Crash Boat Beach in Aguadilla (Gulbrandson et al, 2019). The Trade Association also made use of its network to fuel the economic recovery efforts by having businesses like American Airlines and Skift to host conferences in Puerto Rico (Gulbrandson et al, 2019).

In a grassroots level, the Foundation for Puerto Rico worked closely with local communities in the Bottom Up Destination Recovery Initiative to foster the entrepreneurial spirit and educate in order to support these communities be more resilient and proactive in the creation and development of local touristic attractions and have their own Destination Plan, as these communities are the most vulnerable to climate change disasters, but also essential to the island’s recovery and transformation in such events (Foundation for Puerto Rico, 2020a). Besides engaging the community in their own destination plan to foster economic development, they also provided resiliency kits to small businesses across Puerto Rico impacted by Maria, which included satellite Wi-Fi, water filters, and solar lighting (Peltier, 2018).

Puerto Rico’s Sustainability, Governance and Resilience in Face of Climate Change Events

It is possible to observe that in face of the natural disaster in Puerto Rico, Sustainability was not a word used in the recovery efforts. The actions taken were mainly focused on the rebuilding the destination in order to put the word out for tourists to return and invest in portfolio diversification in order to make the economic engine of the destination turn swiftly.

Observing the DMO’s and PRHTA’s efforts and making a parallel to Sarin’s (2014, p. 4) traditions to sustainable tourism development, they take an industry-based approach, as their focus was in revitalizing the industry with a sense of urgency. Whereas, at the same time the community-based approach co-exists with it in the grassroots efforts done by the Foundation for Puerto Rico initiative. It can also be observed through PRHTA’s actions with the businesses network co-opetition and the use of tourists as a direct resource to take action in the recovery process.

Referring to the environmental approach that is not mentioned at all by the organizations, known as resource-based in Sarin’s model, it is hard to state how a long-term, carrying-capacity plan could co-exist and help in such scenario of climate change events in coastal destinations, that have been identified as among the most vulnerable (Moreno & Becken, 2009 in Dogru et al, 2019, p. 294). In the face of such complex issue related to worldwide gas emissions and other industry’s practices linked as a cause to extreme climate events, it makes islands as Puerto Rico powerless to fight on its own, as islands account for merely a small portion of worldwide emissions (Byrne & Inniss 2002, p. 15 in Petzold, J., 2017, p. 48). So, the lack of immediate action of Puerto Rico towards sustainability related to the environmental aspect so soon after a climate change event can be understood. When it comes to climate change mitigation, external factors must be addressed first and AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States), which main focus is climate change, sustainable development and ocean conservation and which Puerto Rico is not a member of (AOSIS, 2020), emphasises its strong support for the Kyoto-Protocol and UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) goals to reduce emissions (Petzold, J., 2017, p. 48).

The destruction caused by the hurricane required quick action in order to restore the island to a minimally functional state in order to re-open it again for tourism. Based on the research made for this paper, it is possible to observe in this instance that in the DMO’s level, the response to the natural disaster took the approach of a passive adaptive management (Adger, 2006 in Saarinen and Gill 2019, p. 21), as the main focus was rebuilding and at the same time open for business as usual, whereas in the argument by Dilling et al., 2015; Watson, Iwamura & Butt, 2013 (in Dogru et al, 2019, p. 294) says that to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies in order to deal with climate change impacts “a systemic vulnerability and resilience assessment of a destination should be the starting point for decision-makers…”. In order to deal with climate change challenges and take effective action to mitigate, rather than a passive adaptive management which is reactive to change, an active adaptive one is required, where proactive learning and decisions and actions where improving knowledge and learning are valued (Walters, 1986 in Saarinen & Gill 2019, p. 21). The closest to an active adaptive management approach can be observed in the actions of Foundation for Puerto Rico, working closely with the communities to help them build more resilience in the face of such events, that are bound to happen again, as winters in the archipelago also represents the hurricane season (Méndez-Lázaro, et al 2014, p. 3).

Puerto Rico’s governance was highly impacted by the endogenous and exogenous event. The decentralization of the destination’s marketing management through the approval the “Act to Promote Puerto Rico as a Destination” and Maria and Irma could have played a role in the reported success by the new DMO, which led to a path-creation which not necessarily led to sustainable tourism (see Gill & Williams, 2011), but, nonetheless helped the island develop resilience in face of the devastating climate change events, by attracting tourists in order to resume the economic activities on the island. It could be argued that climate change events are negative endogenous events that can change the destination’s path, but with an active adaptive management a more positive path creation can developed, as shown in the case of mountain tourism communities in the Swiss Gotthard region (see Luthe et al, 2012).

Puerto Ricans are familiar with the word resilience and it is embedded in their cultural identity, as dealing with the aftermath of climate events is expected, especially during the winter season. The DMO’s CEO even referred to puerto ricans as having “unintentionally earned a PhD in economic recovery” (Talty, 2020). In a grass roots level, the value of social capital was proved to be a powerful tool to obtain resources for the wellbeing of the communities by using a bottom‐up approach (see Delilah Roque et al 2020, p. 226). But relying only in the community’s ability to adapt well in the face of adversity, does not pave the way for sustainable development. A system can be highly resilient but that situation can be based on a negative lock-in in tourism and regional development (Simmie & Martin, 2010, p. 32 in Saarinen and Gill 2019, p. 23), which in this case is exemplified by the extensive efforts in revitalizing the tourism industry, rather than reduce the vulnerability Puerto Rico’s communities in face of climate change events.

Conclusion

Although the resources of information in this paper is limited in order to have a full picture of how Puerto Rico is dealing overall with Tourism Governance and Resilience towards Sustainable Tourism after being affected by the hurricanes, it is possible to conclude that the main organizations in its governance are mainly focused on economic development and the industry-based sustainable tourism development tradition. Community-base tradition is found in the efforts of Foundation for Tourism and independent businesses that operate in the industry. In relation to climate change events mitigation, just the timid initiative of resiliency kits for small businesses can be interpreted as a concrete step to increase the preparedness of communities when the next imminent climate change event hits. Environmental concerns were not voiced in the interviews with the main organizations in the destination, perhaps due to the powerlessness of the small archipelago in developing effective solutions for climate change mitigation in a local level. This is even more so for Puerto Rico, due to their lack of political voice in the U.S. Congress and its decision’s that also impact climate change actions in a global level.

Both, the focus in the industry-based sustainable tourism development tradition and the lack of political power to deal with climate change issues in a global-local dynamic, can possibly stir Puerto Rico into a passive adaptive management in face of climate disasters. If Puerto Rico wants to develop an effective plan to mitigate climate change disasters and increase resilience as a tool for sustainable development using an active adaptive management, the DMO, Trade Association and the Puerto Rico Tourism Company must work more closely with the Foundation for Puerto Rico to support and further develop their current ongoing efforts, stablishing a bottom up and top down dynamic between them, building partnerships across scales (local, national, and international) and creating a balance in the current tourism development traditions of industry-based and community-based. Moreover, the partnerships in an international level can also assist Puerto Rico in create agency in face of Climate Change threats, as the AOSIS coalition of islands state currently does.

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