VILLAGES AS BUSINESSES PAVING THE WAY FORWARD FOR CARIBBEAN COMMUNITIES Jamaica has been branded the HOME OF COMMUNITY TOURISM by the International Institute for Peace through Tourism (IIPT) as this is where it was pioneered 45 years ago by Diana McIntyre-Pike owner/operator of The Astra Country Inn Mandeville then and the late Desmond Henry, a past Director of Tourism. Together they created the Countrystyle Community Tourism Network (CCTN) to develop community tourism mainly on the south coast of Jamaica. In more recent years, CCTN developed a nonprofit membership organization called VILLAGES
AS BUSINESSES (VAB) which has received local and international recognition. Diana McIntyre-Pike has received several awards for this initiative, the most recent being in 2020 from the newly formed World Tourism Network (WTN) as one of 17 Tourism professionals to be awarded an international Tourism Heroes Award.
The Villages as Businesses (VAB) programme has been implementing a five-day Entrepreneurship Hospitality Training in several communities in Jamaica and the Caribbean region which is now certified by Jamaican Diaspora
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