Caribbean Loses one Industry Conference, Gains Another

Caribbean Loses one Industry Conference, Gains Another
By Gay Nagle Myers (Travel Weekly)

As conference schedules go, it was an even draw for the Caribbean region last week: One conference got axed, and another conference was announced. What went down: the first Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Conference, scheduled to take place in Barbados from June 1 to 3. Low registration sank that one. Now the Caribbean's first State of the Industry conference, set for Sept. 14 to 17 in St. Martin, has been announced.

In a statement, the Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Association said it scrapped the Barbados event because "the registration numbers were deemed too low to have resulted in a conference with the substance and character we had envisioned."

The new event, sponsored by the CTO, actually is part two of a two-conference CTO plan. For 30 years up through 2007, the CTO held its Caribbean Tourism Conference each fall. Three years after that event was discontinued, CTO introduced the Leadership Strategy Conference to replace the CTC.

The first Leadership Strategy Conference, which took place last October in Barbados, was planned to be held every other year and to coincide with the induction of a new CTO chairman, whose term of office is two years.

For the alternate year, the CTO came up with the State of the Industry conference. This year's event will take a look at the current state of the Caribbean tourism industry, examine issues that affect the tourism sector and formulate plans for the future, according to the CTO.

The conference also will see the return of the Tourism Youth Congress, a component of the old CTC, in which Caribbean youth debate issues of concern to the industry. The conference program will be announced shortly, and several sessions and workshops will be geared toward travel agents.