January 2017 | Business View Caribbean

54 55 gear a multi-pronged approach toward address- ing the Zika matter. It’s been a coordinated effort, a partnership between the public and private sectors, working in collaboration with the regional umbrella group, called CARPHA, the Caribbean Public Health Agency organi- zation that represents ministries of health throughout the Caribbean.We’ve been working diligently on education, training, getting the right kind of information out there –mitigation and effective control techniques - and looking at it not only from the hotel and tourism in- dustry’s point of view, but looking at it as an essential broader collaborative response by governments, communities, and our industry in the private sector, in dealing with a matter that, if it’s not handled as well as it could, might have broad consequences on our economies and our industry, and, quite frankly, the social health and welfare of the residents of the Caribbean. To date we’ve seen an overwhelming positive re- sponse and the industry has quickly responded with stepped up vector controls, staff training, and public education efforts aimed at guests and employees. BVM: Can you talk a little about the nuts and bolts of the Association? Who are your members caribbean hotel and tourismassociation and what are their different tiers of member- ship? COMITO: We’re a federation of national hotel and tourism associations, so the region’s nation- al hotel and tourism associations are members. We also have over 600 hotel members from the Caribbean and another 400 allied members, both within the Caribbean as well as external partners – tour operators, wholesalers, airlines, people who do business with the tourism in- dustry, even banks and other kinds of financial institutions.We also have what we call partner organizations that we work with like the Flor- ida-Caribbean Cruise Association; the Caribbe- an and Central American Action, based out of Washington; the Caribbean Council, based out of the United Kingdom; and IATA, the Interna- tional Air Transport Association. So we have a number of affiliated memberships, which are really reciprocal memberships – there’s quite a few of those. BVM: What kind of events do you hold for your members? COMITO: “We have four key events through- out the year.We just completed our annual marketing event called Caribbean Travel Mar- ketplace, which was held in The Bahamas and had over a thousand participants. That’s the industry’s premier business gathering where we bring suppliers– suppliers being the hotels throughout the region, some of the local tour