In February the BTB hired a new high profile director of tourism, Seleni Matus. She promised to shake things up - which was not an option but a necessity - since for the past two years - Belize's tourism industry has been on a downturn - after years of growth.
Now, a lot of this has to do with the world economic crisis but instead of waiting for the world to change the BTB today launched what it calls a game changing action plan.
It promises a complete overhaul of how the BTB works internally and how it reaches potential visitors.
A two hour launch was made today before industry stakeholders who had been consulted on the way ahead. After, Director Matus told us how their game will change:…
Jules Vasquez
"Why first of all was a game change necessitated?"
Seleni Matus, Director of Tourism
"Well as we know these are very difficult times that we are in. Over the past 2 years or so there's been a drastic global change. First of all, travelers have really changed the way they look to decide on destinations and plan their travel. We've also been hard hit by the global recession, so this is calling for a different way in looking at issues and responding to it. So from our standpoint it was extremely important at this point in time to shift gears."
Jules Vasquez
"Now I heard the president of the hotel association refer to it as a paradigm shift which means a lot. Is it really that consequential a change in how things are done by the BTB?"
Seleni Matus, Director of Tourism
"I believe it is. It's calling for large scale re-organization. Although we are working, all the existing staff have a new place in the organization, what they will be doing and how they will be working is dramatically different and we are also bringing new skill sets and individuals with expertise that we currently don't have to be able to compete globally. The start of that was the announcement of our new director of marketing here today."
Yanick Dalhouse, Director of Marketing - BTB
"You know the action plan calls for us to do a deep dive and looking internally at where we might have some gaps so we can build capacity in those areas and really hit home on some of our key initiatives as it relates to our action plan in the areas of building trade partnerships, in the areas of making sure that we have online opportunities to help build content and share our stories to encourage travelers to visit our destination as well as in the areas of hospitality management and traditional media marketing and sustainability."
Jules Vasquez
"The cost of having a vacation in Belize is far higher than it is in neighboring countries or competing countries. You can't change that single immutable fact, you can just change all the ancillary things."
Seleni Matus, Director of Tourism
"Yes, to note however that the interest in Belize continues to grow, additionally the recognition and the information about our brand is pretty skimpy in key markets and so there is a unique opportunity to do a deep dive to get into those markets with the new strategy that we have that is looking to shift away from your traditional media to more new media."
Yanick Dalhouse, Director of Marketing - BTB
"We are not taking a broad brush approach to encourage tourism to Belize, really we have to individually look at each of the different divisions and how we can encourage travel within those specific niche areas and ultimately as the director mentioned build partnerships to help also add to our efforts."
Dalhouse - who is seconded from Belize's tourism marketing firm in Wisconsin, BVK will be training a Belizean understudy to take up the post.
One of the major game change operations will be the regularizing of activity in front of the fort street tourism village. We'll tell you about the plans for that tomorrow.
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