The Editor, Sir:

I met Desmond Henry when he was director of tourism in 1978, and shared my passion for Mandeville and the south coast to be developed with communities participating and being able to be partners in tourism. He was very receptive as he also shared the same vision and together we formed a lifetime partnership and commitment to market the south coast in a different way. We even paid for a community survey to ascertain how the citizens of the area felt about having tourism in their communities and the survey confirmed that they wanted a tourism that valued their culture, heritage and lifestyle.

Together, we developed a marketing company, which started out as South Coast Marketing, and Desmond suggested that we brand the approach as Community Tourism. Many articles were written by Desmond and together we did several presentations throughout Jamaica until we formed Countrystyle as the marketing company when we recognised that other areas in Jamaica shared our vision.

International attention

Since then, we received international attention through the International Institute for Peace through Tourism who invited us to do a presentation on the work and vision of Countrystyle, which was based at The Astra Country Inn at their second Global Conference, in Montreal, Canada, in 1994, and it was then that we shared our brand name of Community Tourism with the world.

Desmond was one of my partners, directors and friend. Even though he was ill and overseas, we kept in touch and he continued to inspire me to take community tourism beyond the beaches. When he visited Jamaica last December to touch base with his family and friends, he was pleased to see that community tourism was alive and well.

Desmond will always be with us - his vision will not die. On behalf of all of us working in community tourism - thank you for all you did!

I am, etc.,

DIANA McINTYRE-PIKE

Countrystyle Community

Tourism Network

Mandeville, Manchester