Q & A with Vincent Vanderpool-WallaceSecretary-General of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO)

by Jose Carlos de Santiago

CHIC 2006 – Miami

CHA and CTO are encouraging an alliance that pursues, among other things, to target the European market by prodding Caribbean nations to look further to the Old World and swing their doors wide open to a number of investors –a strategy that eventually winds up bringing in more tourists.

Mr. Vanderpool-Wallace is sure the Caribbean has to rely a whole lot more on the Internet, otherwise it runs the risk of putting itself behind a competitive eight-ball in the international market. About this and other issues, Caribbean News Digital talked exclusively with Mr. Vanderpool-Wallace in CHIC 2006.

Q.- What´s the current position of both CTO and CHA about the support the European market needs from them?

A.- Well, one of the things you´re going to see us start up with at the end of November, right after World Travel Market, is that we´re going to go on the road in a number of European countries –France, Spain and Italy in particular- to make sure we establish ourselves there. Prior to that we´re going to hire a company to represent us in these markets because we´ve realized we have not been doing the kind of job we need to get done. Furthermore, what we´re finding is that a lot of the markets that have gotten their business straight from France or from Spain, now want to look to other markets for them to grow, and then those that have never gotten business from Spain or France, now want to go into those markets. So, we think this is a perfect marriage between the members of CTO and CHA to get those people who are stuck in one market for a long time to look at others and vice versa. That´s what we´re beginning to do come November.

Q.- Are CTO and CHA going to attend FITUR´s next edition?

A.- Yes. Part of the reason why we´re doing what we´re doing is to make sure that we´re much better prepared than we were last year. The problem is that unless you have the necessary infrastructure in place to support your being there, you´re getting the kind of attention that you need. So, that´s why we want to have somebody permanently placed in those markets who represents the Caribbean to make sure that you follow through and follow up on a yearly basis, because if you´re going to the tradeshow and then you´re going back home, it´s a total waste of time. So, we want to make sure we have all the infrastructure in place to take full advantage of it.

Q.- Spanish companies and enterprises are investing more and more in the Caribbean, and the number keeps growing with each passing year. What´s the position of the different Caribbean countries and governments in the face of the increasing phenomenon?

A.- The difference now is that they´re all over the board. Some, as you know, are fully embracing some of these investors and others are not anywhere near to bring in these kinds of investors. At the investment conference, for example, that we have every year between CTO and CHA one of the things that we want to do is to begin to tell our governments that the fastest way for you to begin to build business from a particular market is to bring investors from that market to your country. We think that´s a very important track for them to be on and if you want to get business from Spain, what better way to begin to do this than by having Spanish investors in your country. If you want to get business from France, what better way than getting French investors because that enables communication and people begin to recognize that somebody for their country has endorsed that destination. We think that´s very important.

Q.- What´s the position of CTO´s main office in Europe about the representations in Spain, France and Italy, nations where CTO doesn´t have representation right now?

A.- I was in Europe two months ago and I sat down with all of them, and the German Chapter met with all the prospects we´re looking at to make certain that everybody is very clear that we want to expand our presence in those markets considerably.

Q.- Have you met with the presidents of the different Spanish companies?

A.- No, we haven´t done that as yet. That´s the path that we want to go down, but certainly that´ll be a long-term development, but we haven´t done any of that yet.

Q.- There´s a lot of talk about integration and unity. Is there any interest in having Mexico join CTO?

A.- Mexico is not a member of CTO at the moment and one of the things that we have pledged our membership is that we want to get things right for the existing membership first before we begin to expand and look for other members. We have people that are now asking to become members of CTO in numbers that we´re quite flattered by, but we have told them, ‘thank you, but for the moment we really want to get a number of things right first before we begin to consider expanding the membership of CTO.´

Q.- Is it Mexico´s economic contribution one of the drawbacks for that country´s joining CTO?

A.- No, that´s not an issue. Again, we just want to be sure that we take full advantage of the initiatives we´re developing right now and make certain that all of our members are getting the full benefits of it because if you focus on expansion instead of making sure your members are getting the benefits, I think you´re not really working on their behalf as good as you should.

Q.- And in the case of Panama?

A.- It´s the same story. I won´t name the countries that have applied for membership in CTO, but it´s the same story. We´re telling them, ‘thank you very much for your interest, but we have a job to do to make sure that the existing members feel quite comfortable. Here´s the issue; if you´re a member right now and you think there are some things you´d like to get from CTO and CHA and you´re not now getting, and then you notice there are a lot more other members coming in, you begin to think nobody is paying attention to you. So, we want to make sure we focus on the existing members first before we start expanding.

Q.- The challenge for the Caribbean in the face of the good numbers some new markets are putting on the board, alternative destinations like Dubai or Las Vegas that are growing at a white-heat´s pace, what´s the challenge for the Caribbean to be up to par with them and put up a competitive fight?

A.- What it´s happening right now is that´s a lot of competition going on and that competition is increasing dramatically around the world. That´s the reason why we´re doing such a great effort about the Internet because we want the people of the Caribbean to understand that for you to get to China, to India, to Russia in the past the process used to be much slower than what it is now. In the past you needed to go there and establish an office, but now it all boils down to a website to get all the information you need. So, we´re building a whole series of websites in a variety of languages so that we´ll make sure we have the Caribbean much more available than we had it before. That´s one of the reasons why we´re investing so heavily on the Internet.

Q.- Can you give us some preliminary figures about how many visitors the Caribbean is expecting to receive this year?

A.- Yes. It´s about 21 million stopover visitors and about 11 million cruise passengers.

Q.- What are the top outbound markets in order?

A.- Well, most of these visitors are coming from North America. The U.S. is our number-one market. I haven´t looked at the numbers, to tell you the truth because I look at them on a destination-by-destination basis, I don´t look at them overall for the Caribbean. But I suspect the number-two market may well be United Kingdom, and then Germany, Spain and then France. That´ll be my guess.

Q.- What Caribbean countries are posting the biggest numbers of arrivals, in terms of incoming visitors?

A.- In terms of size, the Dominican Republic is number one as far as stopover visitors are concerned. Then you get Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Jamaica. And Cuba, forgive me, Cuba is actually number two.

Q.- Is the Mexican Caribbean a true competitor for the smaller Caribbean islands?

A.- Absolutely. But then, again, the Bahamas are competition and Bermudas is competition as well. We compete among ourselves while at the same time we cooperate to grow the whole Caribbean. Whether it´s in our best interest to promote the Caribbean, everybody is benefiting, but you need to compete with one another because we think that´s the best that can happen.

Q.- What´s the position of the American people about the mandatory passport issue?

A.- That´s what we were talking about earlier. We´re hoping to postpone that measure because when you look at how many Americans got passports the numbers are not anywhere closer to what we´d like to see. There´s a proposal to postpone it to June 2009. We´re supporting that fully because we think it makes a lot of sense.