90 December 2015 - Business View Caribbean
Talking Business:
Jeff Vasser
30 minutes with the CEO of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association
BUSINESS VIEW: Talk about the history of the or-
ganization – in terms of how it’s evolved, was this
always the plan? Have things taken different direc-
tions based on circumstance or anything else?
JEFF VASSER:
The market has changed a bit, and
we’ve changed with it. In the old days, going back less
than 10 years, we were known as the Caribbean Hotel
Association, and what we are is an association of as-
sociations. We are made up of 33 individual national
hotel associations, so they are our members, as well
as individual hotels. Several years ago, we changed
our name to the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Associa-
tion to better reflect the members that we represent
– the other private sector, tourism, at least throughout
the Caribbean; and that includes restaurants, a huge
part of our membership base now, attractions and
travel and tour operators on the islands. What we’re
trying to do is make sure that everybody recognizes
the strength of our industry, the strength and the im-
portance of tourism to the individual islands and to
their governments. And, certainly, to a degree, market
what the Caribbean has – the top warm water destina-
tion in the world.
BV: What sort of membership numbers are you at
and how has that changed over the recent past?
VASSER:
We have over 600 individual hotel members,
33 countries’ national hotel associations that are
members. That is down from our peak. In 2008, when
the economy went south, people would stop travel-
ing, it started in 2001 and then again in 2008, people
stopped traveling and a lot of hotels had to drop out,
a lot of hotels closed in those days. So we are down
from our peak, but we are close to getting back to that
