SAN JAUN, Puerto Rico – Marketing the Caribbean as a whole is key to growing tourism, according to top officials.
Hugh Riley, secretary general of the public sector Caribbean Tourism Organisation, said this would draw attention to the Caribbean brand when potential visitors were considering a destination. Choosing an individual country or island comes second, he said.
Mr. Riley was speaking at the 16th annual Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference, which brings together high-level government and private sector bodies to discuss and implement initiatives geared toward investment in tourism.
Ricky Skerritt, president of the organisation, said the private sector shared the vision of strengthening the Caribbean brand, and to that end the private sector group the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association was also involved in a collaboration to create the Caribbean Tourism Development Company.
This was given the task of regional marketing and will take over from current Caribbean Tourism Organisation activities in the United States and then Europe during 2012.
Luis Rivera Marin, the new executive director of aPuerto Rico Tourism Company, said it was vital to make sure there was a common voice to provide a proper framework of products and services, to increase air access and to increase cruise travel in the region.
“Markets have also changed with Puerto Rico developing access to Europe, Canada and other sources in addition to North America,” he said.
New destinations
Alec Sanguinetti of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association said there were now services to Brazil in destinations such as Barbados, which was also growing its Scandinavian flights. Elsewhere, there were charters from Russia into Punta Cana.
“The Caribbean is spreading its wings outside its traditional markets. It is one of the rights of human beings to travel; therefore, we must be balanced in taxation and reduce barriers due to visa issues and so on,” he said.
Panellists reiterated their commitment to intra-Caribbean travel. The Caribbean Tourism Development Company will have this as a focus and it was noted that when budget airline REDJet was in operation, it showed that there was pent-up demand for people to travel between island destinations. Whilst that company had run into difficulties, Mr. Skerritt said, the experience had been that many new travellers had taken the opportunities presented.
“It is time for all governments to wake up to the need to support intra-regional airlift. After all, subsidising is just another word for investing … we have to get together and talk about how to keep airlines in the air. Between 10 and 35 per cent of travel is intra-regional and although it is a complicated and difficult issue it is critical.
“No government can ignore the difficulties that face airlift in the region and we need to create a forum to bring these issues to the table,” he said.
By October 2012 it was hoped key players would come to the table to address this urgent situation, he said.
In 2006, 1.6 million people travelled intra-regionally, but by 2010 this had declined to 500,000, which showed there was significant room for growth.
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