And so the marketing effort is being refined and adjusted to these new market realities. Jomarie Lanza found out more at the civic centre:

At BTB's Boom Conference today, partner agencies and tourism experts highlighted how artificial intelligence and travel intelligence platforms are transforming the tourism industry. They shared key strategies that could shape the future of tourism in Belize. We spoke with two of the presenters who addressed over 200 industry stakeholders:

Cole Zimmerman, Zimmerman Agency, Executive Vice President
"We are really focusing on the US market and what's happening in the US market right now with the political landscape and how we are going to overcome that. Some new things, some new exciting things for the year that Belizeans should be focused on: we are launching a new campaign called Belize Life Coach, it really focuses on the people of Belize as being the life coaches which is a really cool aspect to bring back to the community because it's bringing not only the marketing efforts in the US but bringing them home to Belize so people will be able to see it from both sides and it really blends into a full circle effect of our marketing efforts. We got a new website that is going to be launching this summer for Belize that is intact with AI, itinerary builders, it's got AI for searches so anything you are wanting to do or looking to do instead of going to a search platform. , which if anybody really looks at it search is going to be going away by 2025 everything will be a behaviour based on AI so we are actually asking questions like hey my family wants to go to a destination that offers cultural history, expiration and excursions and a beach destination where they are still familiar with US, Belize will be showing up with an entire itinerary built out for that person based on what their behaviours are from past behaviours and also the behaviours they are putting into their questions online and it's a really cool shift and we are trying to make sure that, we are calling it Belizean intelligence because it is making sure we are in the lead for innovation and I think along with a new website the campaigns and how we are targeting the Americans to come to the destination is going to make sure that we are successful for this year and future years."

Alycia Rey, Senior Vice President, Zimmerman Agency
"I think our PR efforts are worth noting because from a public relations standpoint we are really focused on earn media so while these guys are coming up with really brilliant creative strategies and placing ads through paid media and paid social on the PR side is his counterpart where we are making sure we are getting earned media which is essentially a third party endorsement for the country so what we are doing on the PR side is continuing to bring editors from a high yield, a high leadership and high value publications like travel leisure, national geographic, New York Times magazine bringing them to the destination to experience It first Hand because as Cole mentioned there is so much to see and do here there are so many different angels and stories to be told from the Belize standpoint so I think it is worth noting that PR plays a really big role in that as well."

Keynote speaker Seth Borko the Director of Research for Skift gave us more details on how the platform can be used to analyze tourism trends in Belize.

Seth Borko, Director of Research, Skift
"Skift is one of the leading travel intelligence platforms out there so what that means is we do news, we do events and we do market research, we also do some consulting. I lead our research team and so I'm here working with the Belize tourism board here at boom to talk about some of the big picture trends what are the ideas and things that are happening in the tourism industry that we want the leaders of the Belize tourism industry to be aware of so we do a lot of market research we do consumer surveys we do economic data we do financial data that sort of thing so that is what I'm here to share with the leaders of the Belize tourism community."

The BOOM conference was followed in the afternoon by the Belize Airlift Development Conference.

And tomorrow will see the 9th Digital Marketing Summit.