Chairman of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation Pamela Richards has indicated that the CTO will continue to focus on a much more business like approach to tourism development over the next several years.
This was outlined at a recent press conference in New York City, a CTO press release says.
‘She predicted that as a result of these efforts, increasing visitor expenditure should easily keep pace with the 3.4 per cent per year rate predicted by the World Travel & Tourism Council for the next ten years to reach $32 billion by 2015,’ outlines the release.
‘According to preliminary estimates of the Caribbean Tourism Organization, visitor expenditures reached $23 billion in 2005 with stay-over visitors growing by 3.6 per cent to reach 22.5 million and cruise passenger visits declining by 2 per cent to 19.8 million.’
Referring again to WTTC data, Commissioner Richards noted that the Caribbean is more dependent on tourism than any other region in the world and in order for the region to extract the maximum benefits from tourism on behalf of its citizens, it has no choice but to take a much more businesslike approach to its development compared to what has been done in the past.
The release also outlines that the CTO, in conjunction with its private sector partner, the Caribbean Hotel Association, with whom it recently signed a Memorandum of Co-operation and Co-ordination, is in the final stages of establishing a Business Development Unit that is intended to raise funds to promote greater awareness of the Caribbean brand globally as well as deliver expanded services to the members of both organizations.
Priority areas
The Chairman explained that the CTO in accordance with its new thrust will focus on seven areas, namely, improving data collection, mining and management, expanded training and development opportunities for all staff in the tourism sector, the development of a world class consumer site for the Caribbean, development of a world class membership site that will focus on best practices, an expansion of public relations activities, expanded promotion of its consumer web address and commitment to private-public sector sustainable development and co-operation.
She noted that all 32 members of CTO are being encouraged to focus on these areas also.
Progress on all of these new initiatives will be reviewed during the organisation’s annual Caribbean Week which is scheduled for New York during the week of June 11-17.
The first of the seven areas of focus will come in the area of the development of data systems that will provide better intelligence for promotion and product improvement activities.
‘Governments are finding that with better and more timely processing of Immigration card data from both incoming and departing visitors, patterns of opportunity and concern are highlighted much more easily and use of resources can be more targeted that ever before,’ said the release.
‘CTO has already designed an Immigration card with a number of core questions. In those Caribbean destinations that do not require mandatory completion of an Immigration card, officials are exploring the use of a tourism card to capture data in the most efficient manner.’
Training and development according to internationally recognized standards is the next area of focus. ‘CTO recognizes that in a world that is increasingly going to the internet to find information on destinations, hotels and attractions, it is most important that all tourism facilities throughout the Caribbean can be purchased with confidence and the adoption of internationally recognized standards provide that confidence.’
Since more and more consumers are accessing information about the Caribbean from a web site, it is imperative that the Caribbean web site be of world class quality, the release points out. The creation of the site will be a joint CHA-CTO effort and is expected to be completed entirely by June of this year.
The Chairman also pointed out that a key initiative of both CTO and CHA will be the completion this year of a membership site that will provide focus on the delivery of information on ‘best practices’ garnered from both within and outside the Caribbean. She noted that this was clearly the best way to accelerate the rate of improvement of products and services across the Caribbean.
It is clear that CTO believes that good public relations will be its principal tool in its marketing arsenal and through its marketing initiatives the Caribbean’s new logo, which has already been unveiled, will begin to be exposed.
The final area of focus for the CTO will be private public sector cooperation and coordination in everything that is done with a constant eye on sustainability.
‘With regard to the latter, the CTO’s conference on sustainable development which is scheduled to be held in Puerto Rico in April will focus on Sustainable Development and Economic Progress. The theme is intended to address the oft expressed myth that Sustainable Development and Economic Progress are sometimes mutually exclusive.’
Overall, says the release, the CTO sees a growing and sustained change in vacation patterns from simple sun and sand seeking to vacationers looking for life enriching experiences. In this regard, it will be recalling and employing the theme ‘Life Needs the Caribbean’ in conjunction with the Caribbean Hotel Association, its principal partner.
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