B.T.B. increases efforts to attract tourists
Getting tourists to visit your country is the goal of every good tourist board, but what if people don’t even know where your country is? Well the Belize Tourism Board wants to increase awareness of Belize’s location and all the wonderful things we have to offer. With a marketing budget of over two million dollars and the help of Clark and Pope Marketing Agency in New York, the B.T.B. has launched several initiatives to attract the attention of the North American traveler. Details of the program were announced this morning at an Industry Presentation hosted by the B.T.B. It includes an advertising campaign in select North American magazines such as Conde Nast Traveler, Archaeology and Audubon. U.S. public broadcasting stations will also be airing over 1600 ads on Belize over the next three months and Belize will be featured on CNN’s program Earth Matters. The overall objectives of the marketing campaign are to increase tourist arrivals by 12 percent over the next year, create an image of an undiscovered, unspoiled vacation destination that offers a unique vacation opportunity and strategically position Belize on the Mundo Maya route. News Five spoke with Deputy Director of Marketing Tracy Taegar Garcia about the advertising campaign and the possibilities of attracting more European travelers.
Tracy Taegar Garcia, Deputy Dir. of Marketing, B.T.B.
“We haven’t had a consistent approach or a focussed approach to our advertising efforts. The magazines that we’ve selected will target people that we want to get to Belize: the eco-adventurists, the soft person involved in soft adventure and diving – the people that will appreciate the product that we have.
The strategy is that for the first two quarters of the year we will heavily target consumer magazines so that the consumer can learn about Belize. For the rest of the year we will maintain a presence with the trade which will end up selling Belize to the consumer.
We think that there’s great potential in Europe. We still have a lot of work to do in North America obviously but we think that with the direct connection with Grupo TACA that we will have a jump start in getting the European market here to Belize.”
Besides the marketing campaign other issues discussed this morning included plans to establish a tourism institute to train young Belizeans in catering, hospitality management and hotel management. Members of the tourism industry will be meeting with Minister of Tourism Mark Espat on Thursday to present a plan to increase Belize’s participation in Mundo Maya, a marketing strategy which emphasizes the common archaeological and cultural heritage of the nations of Central America.
