The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) on Friday issued a statement in response to a campaign launched by two radio announcers in Alabama, U.S., calling on the listeners not to visit Aruba and by extension the Caribbean, as a result of the fallout over the disappearance of an 18-year-old high school graduate on May 30 in Aruba. Dissatisfied with the progress in finding Holloway, a couple of talk show announcers on The Source FM 101.1 in Birmingham, Alabama are discouraging American from traveling to the Caribbean, and especially to Aruba.

The Runaway Bay HEART Hotel and Training Institute, a Jamaican institution charged with responsibility to provide technical and vocational education to nationals of working age, has won the CTO´s award for environmental excellence. The Runaway Bay HEART Hotel and Training Institute operates 56 hotel rooms and a training facility that prepares persons for the hospitality industry. The hotel enjoys an annual average occupancy of 65 percent and the training institute trains about 315 students every year.

New opportunities are being presented to the membership of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) to reach a global audience at relatively low cost. CTO has signed an agreement with International Travel Communications (ITC), a US-based marketing and communications company, in a bid to capitalize on the success of CTO´s consumer website, www.doitcaribbean.com. The website gets over two million visitors a year and, with this agreement, CTO is now cashing in on its strong online presence to assist Caribbean tourism stakeholders by offering them online marketing opportunities in the form of web site banner advertisements, Arley Sobers, CTO´s acting secretary general said.

The Caribbean Tourism Organization’s (CTO’s) 28th annual Caribbean Tourism Conference (CTC-28) will take place in the U.S. Virgin Islands Oct. 22-26. The venue marks the second time in three years that the U.S.V.I. hosted CTC. Last year’s conference -- CTC-27 -- was held in Aruba.

The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), with headquarters in Barbados, will hold its first regional human resources conference in May 23 through 25 as a means of broadening its annual Tourism Educators Forum. Under the theme Raising Standards and Organizational Effectiveness in the Tourism Workplace, the gathering is being organized in collaboration with the Caribbean Tourism Human Resource Council (CTHRC) and the Universidad del Este International School of Tourism and Hospitality Management in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which will be the host venue.

Two regional airlines are offering special discounted fares for the 7th Annual Caribbean Conference on Sustainable Tourism Development (STC-7) to be held in Tobago under the main theme of Keeping the Right Balance - Sustainable Tourism Through Diversity. The Trinidad and Tobago carrier, BWIA West Indies Airways is providing discounted roundtrip tickets from seven gateways in the US and the Caribbean to Tobago, while the intra-Caribbean carrier, LIAT offers special rates from 15 regional states for the April 26-29 conference, the Caribbean Tourism Organization has informed.