B.T.I.A. trains cruise service providers

Throughout their campaign of critical concern aimed at the cruise ship industry, the Belize Tourism Industry Association has maintained that they do in fact support this booming segment of Belize’s tourism product. And now, they’re putting money where their mouths are…by launching their own cruise ship initiative. Working with the Multi-lateral Investment Fund, a subsidiary of the IDB, the BTIA will embark on a three-year project to assist micro and small enterprises providing services and products to visitors at the Mayan sites of Altun Ha, Lamanai, and Caracol. Public Relations and Marketing Officer Kurt Clare told News 5 that the one point five million dollar project is set to start early in the new year.

Kurt Clare, Marketing Officer, B.T.I.A.

?The passengers that visit these areas want to experience culture; they want to experience what is in the region and we feel as though the people, meaning the artisans, the craft people, the people that provides the cultural exchange for them. They are very limited with regards to those services and products they offer to the cruise passengers and what we want to do is to increase their competitiveness as a group so that they can better offer better services as well as the products and so on to the passengers.?

Janelle Chanona

?Through the project, will there be technical support or capital investment??

Kurt Clare

?It?s more technical support basically because we will be offering like managerial skills, helping them to physically create the products, utilizing what they have in their area. We know that there is calabash, there is bamboo, there is coconut that they can physically extract these things from the environment and still in a sustainable way and develop products that are genuine Belize products. It?s more to teach them how to develop business plans, how to manage the business so that they can physically manage their business similar to what the larger corporations are doing that sell craft.?

While the B.T.I.A. is not currently accepting applications for businesses interested in enrolling in the Cruise Ship Tourism Project, you can contact Kurt Clare at the organisation’s offices on North Park Street in Belize City for more information.