BTB gives annual tourism presentation
All those tourists on the streets of Belize City today provided a positive background for the annual presentation of the Belize Tourism Board. News 5’s Jose Sanchez was on hand.
Jose Sanchez, Reporting
The Belize Tourism Board’s Third Annual Tourism Industry presentation highlighted the accomplishments of the last year as well as unveiled the marketing strategy for 2001-2002. One of the more surprising revelations is that despite Hurricane Keith’s destruction, Belize experienced a nine- percent increase in tourist arrivals last year to almost two hundred thousand people.
Tracey Taegar, Director of Tourism
“I think that number is significant when you look at the world trend which is four point five percent over tourist arrivals. So I think we’re way ahead of the game and it’s also significant bearing in mind we survived a category four hurricane last year. And for our industry to turn around so quickly is really a testament of the support and certainly the confidence that the stakeholders have in this industry”
“Sixty percent of our investment this year will go towards marketing initiatives. Four major components really: print advertising, television advertising, and sales representation, which will allow for person to person contact with our trade partners in the U.S. and also public relations. Seventeen percent of our plan will focus on product development initiatives. A specific initiative for Belize as well as our district destinations and twenty-two percent obviously on finance and administrative costs.”
The guest speaker at the presentation was Nadine Godwin, the editor of Travel Weekly, one of the most widely circulated travel trade magazines in the U.S. According to Godwin, Belize’s biggest market is the U.S., and what we need most to improve the industry is more communication.
Nadine Godwin, Editor, Travel Weekly
“My point is to talk about dealings with people who can sell for the interests here. What can they do is communicate a lot more I suspect. Any given person in this audience may be excellent at that, but maybe not all of them, so I’m going to encourage people to pay a lot more attention to communicating with travel agents and tour operators to provide better education to them about this country. I think there’s a lot that even very smart and well informed travel agents don’t know about Belize that they can use
when they talk to clients about prospective trips.”
One of the most significant factors that led to the increase in awareness of Belize as a destination was the Fox Network’s Temptation Island. The show entered the living rooms of close to sixteen million viewers each week. That type of free advertising along with those paid for by BTB should continue to make the numbers rise. Reporting for News 5, Jose Sanchez.
