Terestella Gonzalez DentonExecutive Director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company

by Jose Carlos de Santiago

As we speak, Puerto Rico is piecing together a tourism master plan aimed at laying out concrete strategies that will eventually give the island nation´s travel industry a boost into the near future on an increasingly efficient and sustainable basis.

That´s what the Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company told Caribbean News Digital in this exclusive interview.

Q.- What does tourism mean to Puerto Rico and what approach your company has in mind for the future? Will you stress on both historic and cultural values?

A.- Tourism not only jeans a major economic activity for Puerto Rico and for the wellbeing and living conditions of its citizens, but also something al Puerto Ricans feel very proud of. Puerto Rico is an island that treasures a rich culture and heritage, and we just need to look at tourism that way. I always tell our people that Puerto Rico is like our own home; we need to keep it clean, beautiful for people to come to it and get the best experience they can possibly get.

That message is coming across and I´m glad to tell you that our island has 78 municipalities, yet each and every one of them feel as a part of the whole. We´re also doing our best to educate our citizens, to make them aware of what tourism is actually all about. To me, that´s extremely important.

Q.- What concrete plans do you have for the future?

A.- By the end of this semester, we must have a tourism master plan in place. We´re working on this tourism master plan in an effort to map out concrete strategies to be implemented in the near future. We need to know, for instance, what concrete attractions or destinations tourists are looking for. The tourism master plan will allow us to assess all that information as soon as we have it.

Q.- When will that tourism master plan be ready to go?

A.- By the end of this semester, in the summer. The former administration worked on a strategic scheme that was conceived to be in place through 2006. That strategic plan was put together by both the private and the public sectors. The one thing we all need to do right now is summon all players within the industry for a gathering and assess where we are and what we´ve achieved with these initiatives contained in the strategic plan that is going to be around for the next four years.

The tourism master plan will guarantee a more rational use of the land since it gives us wiggle room to appraise what we exactly need to build and where we need to build it. It may be either bigger hotels for the sake of massive tourism or just the development of specific market segments. This master plan is supposed to shed some light on what to do in Viequez and Culebra, two gems of Puerto Rico with tremendous potentials, especially for adventure and nature tourism.

Q.- Will that master plan be implemented as soon as this summer?

A.- No, we need first to go though a process of discussions, of public hearings with the people of Puerto Rico because it deals, among other things, with a sensitive and complicated issue like the use of land. That´s why I wanted so much this Caribbean Conference on Sustainable Tourism to be held in Puerto Rico because we ought to build awareness in the population about what sustainable tourism is really like and what advantages it might bring for the entire population.

Q.- What will you do to lure far more airlines?

A.- A part of the income the country gets out of tourism has been funneled into the creation of a division or department that´s looking very seriously into the possibility of binging in more airlines and open up more routes toward Puerto Rico.

We´ve also taken a number of actions aimed at making Puerto Rico a far more attractive destination for air carriers. For example, we´ve slashed landing fees levied on airlines, we´ve come up with new marketing strategies, and more recently, last year, we attended a forum in Copenhagen in which we had the opportunity of talking with several airline execs to let them know we have an aggressive program going that´s supposed to target them all.

Q.- Has any airline confirmed its intention to enter the Puerto Rican market?

A.- I would rather leave that answer to the Governor, so we´ll soon hear about that. I promise to let you in on that piece of information before the Governor makes the official announcement. What I can tell you right now is that we´re currently in negotiations to try to bring in more airlines to Puerto Rico with connections with Europe and Latin America.

Q.- What are your plans for the Spanish market?

A.- We´re very interested in the Spanish market because we know that Spaniards travel to the Caribbean a lot, either to Cuba or to the Dominican Republic. We also know that Spanish tourists love coming to Puerto Rico, but we need to give them the right travel package.

Another factor we ought to zero in on is to improve the perception that Europeans have about Puerto Rico, which, as a matter of fact, is not the right one. I think Europeans don´t look at Puerto Rico as a tropical Caribbean island but rather as an extension of the U.S.

I lived in Spain for many years, eight years in Barcelona and one year in Madrid, so I had the chance of taking a closer look at the promotion of other travel destinations. I remember people there always asked me where Puerto Rico was. They see us as people with the same practical sense Americans have. They need to know that Puerto Rico is an exotic place with a strong Caribbean touch, with a hefty Latin culture of its own and an undisputed Hispanic legacy running in our blood.