3. Tourism Development as Colonial Continuity
Tourism's rise to become the main driver of Barbados' economy is considered the point of departure from the plantation economy model of development (Dann and Potter 2001, Dev and Stroock 2023, Potter 1983). When the major statutes governing the sector-the Hotel Aids Act (1956), later refracted into the Tourism Development Act (2002) and Land Acquisition Act (Cap. 228)-are examined in greater detail, this perception disappears. These laws reveal a legal landscape still structured by the same principles that organised labour, land and accumulation in the plantation era. "Competitiveness", "concessions", "incentives", "source markets", "airlift", "foreign exchange earnings" and "foreign direct investment" now substitute for older colonial justifications.
3.1 An Early Template: The Hotel Aids Act (1956)
The Hotel Aids Act (HAA) passed in 1956 and subsequently amended in 1958 and 1960, was presented to the public as a pragmatic step toward diversifying an economy weakened by the relative decline of sugar. Ostensibly, it functioned as an economic incentive package-tax holidays, duty-free imports and public investment in infrastructure for approved hotel projects. In reality, it helped to maintain the existing social and economic order.
The concessions embedded in the HAA largely accrued to those already holding substantial property or financial capital. The merchant families and business class that grew out of the long history of plantation slavery and that had long shaped Barbados' economic life (Beckles 1989)
were among the earliest agents able of taking advantage of the scheme. Local, Black-owned enterprises, lacking both the capital formation and political connections required to access the incentives were largely excluded from participation (Lorde and Joseph 2019). By 1970, foreign interests from Britain and North America controlled large swathes of the hospitality-related accommodation capacity, and by 1985 close to half of all establishments were at least 25 per cent foreign-owned (Jönsson 2018). So, the HAA did not broaden economic participation as much as it reorganised familiar hierarchies under a new sectoral label.
Equally important was the spatial redistribution the HAA reinforced. Large stretches of Barbados' coastline, particularly on the south and west coasts, once used for mixed agriculture, fishing or left undeveloped, became prime sites for tourist accommodations (Potter 1983). By the early 1980s, the coastline had become the island's most economically valuable zone (Potter 1983). Ownership of beachfront land became concentrated in the hands of local elites and foreign investors (Jönsson 2018, Lorde and Joseph 2019), while working-class communities moved inland. The coastal corridor benefited disproportionately from infrastructure investment, while the rural interior and less touristic parishes remained underdeveloped (Potter 1983), reproducing the colonial pattern of a dual economy. The HAA would provide the groundwork for the more expansive tourism statutes that followed in the post-independence era.
The racist, paternalistic US propaganda wielded in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War still holds fast today.
Also, they often tout tourism as a way to centre themselves in discussions of our national sovereignty (o sea, "if it weren't for us...") when it's just colonialism repackaged.
