Tourism players look to market region as one

by Marlon Madden

The Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) and the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) are promising to ramp up marketing efforts to woo more visitors to the region in coming months.

Acting Secretary General of the CTO Neil Walters said his organisation was in the process of “creating tools” to help the region’s tourism sector work through the remainder of the COVID-19 pandemic and “buttress the region for future pandemic or shocks which the experts tell us are coming”.

He said the CTO would be working to “freshen” and “reposition” the regional tourism product “while we assist to create a mechanism to mitigate the effects of future shocks”.

“In addition to that we are looking at additional areas, what we consider low hanging fruits – areas of heritage and cultural tourism – as means of enhancing the Caribbean product, as well as community-based tourism,” he said.

Walters said the CTO was also working closely with industry partners to help beef up the region’s tourism information gathering and reporting to better help with the decision-making processes.

“I think we have missed some opportunities in terms of regional travel and so on, during the pandemic, which could have assisted in beefing up the revenues in some of our countries,” he said.

He explained that the time had come to seriously wmarket the region as one, pointing out that while some countries were doing “an exceptional job” on their own, others were still challenged even as international travel starts to pick back up.

“Now we are seeing the trend going towards more mass reopening, it does create the opportunity of promoting the Caribbean in a more cohesive way. So, we are looking to capitalise on that opportunity,” said Walters.

“Work has already started and we should see some results in the coming months as well as an internal plan within the CTO.

“The idea here is because of limited funding across the spectrum in the Caribbean we are using less expensive approaches especially social media,” he said.

Newly appointed president of the CHTA Nicola Madden-Greig said that organisation continued to “work closely with the CTO on the advancement of a framework for regional tourism recovery, which will be built around a marketing campaign towards ensuring that we can truly market ourselves as one Caribbean”.

“That is deep in discussion and we have an interim tourism working group on which many of us are currently sitting and we look forward to sharing the details with you on that,” she said.

Madden-Greig also indicated that the CHTA would continue to advocate for the expansion of COVID-19 testing across member states, less stringent COVID-19 testing requirements for returning travellers and ensuring vaccines were available for the region with priority for tourism employees.

“These all form part of our behind the scenes and upfront advocacy efforts,” said Madden-Greig.

They were speaking recently during the CHTA’s annual general meeting, which was held virtually.

Madden-Greig said a survey within the tourism sector last month revealed that employment levels increased from 43 per cent reported in February this year, to 71 per cent in September, when matched up against employment levels prior to the pandemic.

Stating that businesses were still vulnerable, she said six per cent of the close to 200 respondents reported that they were highly likely to permanently close within a year and another six per cent from the prior survey said they were still likely to close.

The percentage of those indicating that they were not likely to close, inched up fwrom 49 per cent in March this year, to 57 per cent in September.

marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb