Business View Caribbean - December 2015 91
number. We have about 300 allied numbers – those
members are not hotels, but represent other factions
of the tourism industry. And, my role, coming in, is to,
we’ve been around for 52 years, oversee what the next
50 years will be. I’m in the process of assessing what
our value proposition is to all of our members, what
they want to see from us, what we can do and how do
we deliver those services. The market has changed –
the Internet has made it easier for buyers and sellers
to get together – and what is our role in that?
Traditionally, it’s been putting together events where
buyers and sellers get together. We need to make sure
that we stay relevant and that we continue to market
our region and our hotels and all of our members to
the worldwide business community, as well as to the
traveler. Something that’s new for us is a joint venture
with the Caribbean tourism organization, CTO. What
they are is our sister agency, of the public sector. They
are made up of the ministers of tourism, and the gov-
ernments’ tourism boards. Where we represent the
private sector, they represent the public sector. Where
we have a common interest is in driving more travel
and people to the Caribbean. We formed a company
called the Caribbean Tourism Development Compa-
ny, and that’s relatively new. What we do now is run
a website called CaribbeanTravel.com – and that’s a
joint venture of our efforts. What we try to do is be a
go-to source for travel information for the Caribbean –
whether it be hotels, attractions or restaurants.
What we do, everyday, is load up more and more of
our members, because they’re seeing the value of the
clicks that we’re getting. Just in its first year, we had
about 80,000 hits, 80,000 leads that were generated
from that site. Half of those leads went to the destina-
