Travel Trade Show in Honduras for European Market

Efren Perez

The B.T.I.A., B.T.B. and other tourism stakeholders will be off to the annual Central American Travel Market and Channel Five will be there to bring it to you live from San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The show, which will be in a business meeting style, will attract international travel agents and wholesalers from across the world. The three day event seeks to create opportunities in job creation, revenues, and local development for the Central American countries. B.T.I.A.’s Executive Director, Efren Perez, tells us more.

Efren Perez, Executive Director, B.T.I.A.

“The Central American Travel Market is done every year in different countries. This year it’s gonna be held in San Pedro Sula, Honduras and Belize has been participating for six years now, so this is our sixth time that we are going. Every time that we go, we try to make our presence more known, simply because it is a destination that people are looking for. Travel agents from across the world come and you have a huge amount of travel wholesalers and international press that we are bringing back to Belize after the event. So a total of thirty five different delegates coming back to the country. The show is really comprised of business meeting, where hoteliers and tour operators from Belize go to San Pedro Sula, meet with these travel agencies from South America, Central America, the U.S and also Europe inorder to conduct business and also bring that back home. This year, one of the things that we are doing is that we are collaborating also with Channel 5 to make sure that we are broadcasting that so that other members from B.T.I.A. and the tourism industry will be able to see the value of this event and to see actually the amount of work that we put into making things happen for the industry and all our members. We feel that it is very important at this time that the message is brought forward.”

Andrea Polanco

“Now, who are some of the businesses that you have participating in this travel show?”

Efren Perez

“In this travel show you have businesses like Tropic Air, actually all the Belizean delegates will be flying Tropic Air from here to San Pedro Sula. You also have people like Midas Resort. You have Ka’ana. You have Chaa Creek. You also have El Sueno, which is one of the newer resorts in San Pedro. You have Larubeya, Roberts Grove. It is a total of twenty-three different companies going up.”

Andrea Polanco

“Now you say some of the travel agents will be coming back to Belize. What are some of the things that they will be doing once they get here?”

Efren Perez

“The event itself, the way it is organized is that the media is always invited to this event. The reason is why we have partnered with Channel 5 for them to go. Marleni from Channel 5 will be broadcasting through Open Your Eyes starting on Monday. What happens is that before the event, all the media will be travelling around Honduras getting to know that particular country. There will be three days business meetings and then after that three days that the media and the delegates travel to other countries. For Belize, they will come in on Sunday which will be the seventh and leave Wednesday which will be the tenth. They will be visiting locations such as San Pedro, Caye Caulker, and Placencia and Cayo.”

Channel Five’s coverage will be through Open Your Eyes show. It will kick off this coming Monday and continue with regular updates throughout the event. A live televised show will be held on the morning of Friday October fifth.