Business View Caribbean - July 2016 57
Zika virus situation, which has required some advo-
cacy and outreach. It’s been a coordinated effort, a
partnership effort between the public and private sec-
tors, working in collaboration with the regional um-
brella group, called CARPHA, the Caribbean Public
Health Agency organization that represents ministries
of health throughout the Caribbean. We’ve been work-
ing diligently on education, training, getting the right
kind of information out there – mitigation and effec-
tive control techniques - and looking at it not only from
the hotel and tourism industry’s point of view, but look-
ing at it as a broader collaborative response by govern-
ments, 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.
Can you talk a little about the nuts and bolts of the
Association? Who are your members and are their
different tiers of membership?
We’re a federation of national hotel and tourism as-
sociations, so the region’s national hotel and tour-
ism 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, wholesal-
ers, airlines, people who do business with the tourism
industry, even banks and other kinds of financial in-
stitutions. We also have what we call partner organi-
zations that we work with like the Florida-Caribbean
Cruise Association; the Caribbean and Central Ameri-
can Action, based out of Washington; the Caribbean
Council, based out of the United Kingdom; and IATA,
the International Air Transport Association. So we have
a number of affiliated memberships, which are really
reciprocal memberships – there’s quite a few of those.
What kind of events do you hold for your mem-
bers?
“We have four key events throughout the year. We just
completed our annual marketing event called Carib-
bean Travel Marketplace, which was held in the Baha
t): Frank Comito, CHTA CEO; Emil Lee, CHTA Presi-
15 Caribbean Chef of the Year; Peter Olsacher,
Chef of the Year - WINNER Puerto Rico (left to right): Frank Comito, CHTA CEO; Emil Lee, CHTA Presi-
dent; Jonathan Hernandez, Team Puerto Rico, 2015 Caribbean Chef of the Year; Peter Olsacher,
Judge.
