Local tourism officials are continuing to ramp up efforts to woo more regional travellers to Barbados as the island seeks to recover from months of stagnation in its bread and butter tourism industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Friday, the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI) announced the introduction of an Isle Away digital campaign that officials are hoping will attract more business and leisure travellers.
In addition, they have outlined plans for a revamped destination website as part of a wider “brand repositioning” strategy.
Director for the Caribbean and Latin America at the BTMI Corey Garett said a “global re-entry plan” was being developed and a major part of that would include a re-marketing of Barbados to residents in other Caribbean countries.
“We tailor this specially to re-market Barbados to the Caribbean,” Garett told a special BTMI and InterCaribbean Airways product introduction breakfast seminar at The Abidah by Accra Barbados hotel on Friday.
He said while the Caribbean is considered a “low hanging fruit” it had been ignored for years and Bridgetown did not always get it right especially when it came to attracting leisure tourists from the region.
He pointed out that high costs associated with regional travel and imbalanced connectivity and accessibility have hindered many Caribbean neighbours from visiting the 166 square-mile island.
“Of course, when we talk about our image, the use of inappropriate imagery and messaging have been used to target the Caribbean customer,” said Garett.
However, Garett gave the assurance that this was about to change with the new campaign, which will include the creation of new social media pages, greater use of data analytics and digital advertising and marketing specifically designed for the Caribbean people.
He said all key media partnerships would be used to develop the reconnection efforts, adding that restoring confidence in travellers will also be necessary.
“Day by day we operate on digital platforms and digital is the way to go forward. So by creating the first ever complete regional advertising network with turnkey deployment across the territories at over 1,000 touchpoints, we plan to make use of digital analytics,” announced Garett.
“We intend to build on this and build on things that already connect us and give Caribbean travellers a reason to fall in love with Barbados once again,” he said.
He promised that authentic Barbadian imagery of food and beverage, people and activities would be used in this new campaign as officials advertise all industry segments.
“The move up of the Caribbean destination brand will be Afro-centric. It will feel like ‘they are just like us’ and ‘we are just like them’. The new space will be heavily used for data and analytics programming and management both locally and globally,” he said, adding that training and incentives would be provided for local and regional agents and travel partners to sell destination Barbados.
Meanwhile, Head of Global Markets at the BTMI Petra Roach announced that a launch campaign for the “re-introduction” of Barbados to the global market was slated for early October.
She explained that information gathered from that campaign would be used to develop marketing strategies that speak to the needs of visitors and share various stories about the island while visually depicting the “vibrancy and energy” for which Barbados and its people are known.
“Also emerging from our re-entry efforts is the refresh or our www.visitbarbados.org destination website with the primary aim of facilitating three objectives,” said Roach.
Those objectives, she said were creating a portal of new imagery, fonts and visuals that support the new branding; enhancing the representation of authentic Barbados and positioning the destination’s primary digital portal as a revenue generator to both local, regional and international advertisers.
“This is a significant opportunity that we have already started to build out the framework to capitalise on,” said Roach.
“So, though tourism activity at our ports may have slowed, we have certainly been busy ensuring that we don’t lose our coveted position as one of the world’s most celebrated destinations,” she added.
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