Former B.T.B. director wants enhanced tourism product
Tourism is big business in Belize… even with the slump that we have been experiencing in tourist arrivals it continues to remain an economic priority. And while the Ministry of Tourism is looking at various means of re-attracting visitors to the country, for BTIA member and consultant Valerie Woods, there are still a lot of little details that need to be taken care of to enhance the visitor’s experience. Woods, a former Director of the Belize Tourism Board, was a guest on this morning’s Open Your Eyes and relates some of the minor changes she feels need to be made.
Valerie Woods, Member B.T.I.A.
“So I get at the airport and I see this big box information centre. I think that is not good. I think it should be welcoming, I think it should be open; this is a tropical destination. Let the sun shine and just have great smiles. It is so difficult—what is so difficult and opening your eyes and saying hi, welcome to Belize, how was your flight? And if the person says oh, it was so terrible. Forget that, fort he next seven days, you are in for the experience of your lifetime. Why, because we have a, b, c, d, e. How are you going to do that from a black tinted box at the immigration? What is this box? It’s an actual office that’s an information bender that has been placed there. I thought that was such a backward move for us at the airport. Then you go by the carousel—this is all new and I challenge anybody to go look at this—you go to the carousel to pick up your bags and so you’re waiting and there is this very nicely done advertising signs. Right now it’s all Roe Group of Companies, nothing wrong with that; it’s a great company and has several products. But one of the products is Homeland Memorial burial ground. I’m sorry I just don’t think when I’m standing there with my fins waiting to go on my vacation in Caye Caulker, Placencia, that I have to see an ad saying your eternal resting place. What? So if I should die, Belize is taking care of me as well?”
“I don’t think we are taking the product seriously if we don’t look even at those details. And then you exit and going to the municipal airstrip or hotel Mopan or one of those hotels in the city. So I get into a taxi and I don’t particularly like the view I see, overgrown bush because that’s what it is. Grass is grass but bush dah bush; let’s be real. So if it’s a national priority, that first impression I get from exiting the airport to Belize city or exiting the airport up north depending on where my vacation will take me, it’s critical and we are not as a country, if we are going to be serious about the product, then we gotta take that into consideration. If you were to do a walkabout in the city objectively, are you satisfied with what you are seeing? There are houses that do not look appealing. We mix—because of lack of planning perhaps—there are commercial against residential; it’s just not appealing. We have a fantastic product, I’m very proud of the tourism product that we have, we’ve been really endowed naturally as a country; but there are certain planning and management mechanisms that I think as a challenge we still have to grapple with.”
Those issues and other areas will hopefully be addressed in the National Tourism Master Plan. In November the government secured a twenty-six million dollar loan from the Inter-American Development Bank to finance the development of that plan as well as to improve facilities at key tourist destination sites.
