Q & A with Luana Wheatly, Marketing Director of the USVI Hotel & Tourism Association

FITUR 2008 - Madrid, Spain

The U.S. Virgin Islands -comprising St. John, St. Thomas and St. Croix- have long been considered one of the safest travel destinations in the Caribbean. In addition, the small archipelago operates under U.S. laws and regulations, so visitors traveling in and out of the islands are not subjected to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) that makes mandatory for all American tourists to have valid U.S. passports for Caribbean traveling. About this and other issues, Caribbean News Digital talked exclusively with Luana Wheatly, marketing director of the USVI Hotel & Tourism Association.

Q.- Does the Hotel & Tourism Association comprise the entire territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands?
A.- Yes, but it covers mostly St. John and St. Thomas, their hotels, attractions, tour operators, scuba diving organizations, activities, restaurants. However, anyone can virtually be a member of the USVI Hotel & Tourism Organization. We do have a St. Croix Hotel Association as well.

Q.- How many members are you representing?
A.- At this moment we’re probably representing a membership which is about 350 members.

Q.- Do you believe the USVI’s tourism infrastructure is in good shape right now?
A.- Sure, the infrastructure is great and we realize that we only need to continue to make it better because visitors are getting more and more discriminating and demanding in terms of what they want, so we constantly try to improve our infrastructure.

Q.- Do you think that your visit to Spain’s FITUR will prompt some of your members to conduct a number of actions and promotional efforts to expand the market here in Europe?
A.- Absolutely, because we’re looking at this fair as a possibility of finding a viable market for us. We attended a couple of tradeshows in the last couple of years, and eve though we didn’t get the kind of investment that we’d expected, I do think that our opportunities here in Madrid are a bit better than they are in other European destinations, therefore Spain becomes a really viable market for us. This has been a great exploratory visit for us. It’s been good for us to come at this tradeshow, not only to familiarize consumers about where we are, but to see how important we could actually be in the tour operator market, among travel agents and things along those lines.

Q.- What message will you take back home to your affiliated members?
A.- I definitely think it’s worth returning here at a larger scale with more excitement, demonstrating more about what we have to offer, not only from a hotel standpoint, but culturally and historically which are things that travelers want nowadays.

Q.- To the best of our understanding, the USIV is a very safe destination. Is that so?
A.- Absolutely, absolutely, and also a U.S. destination. We operate under all the U.S. rules. The USVI are very safe.

Q.- Will you be coming back for next year’s edition of FITUR here in Spain?
A.- You bet I’ll be coming back. I always wanted to come to Spain for a long time, just at least to investigate this market and see whether or not it’s something we could really generate a lot of business in. I think that after being at the show, the possibility is definitely there.