Michelle Loubon

San­dra Perkins, The Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd TDC/CEO, led a del­e­ga­tion to 30th Caribbean Ho­tel Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (CHTA) Mar­ket­place At­lantis Par­adise Is­land, Nas­sau Ba­hamas, from Jan­u­ary 22 to 24. Among those who sought to mar­ket the po­ten­tial of T&T were Cor­nell Buck­radee, act­ing TDC mar­ket­ing man­ag­er; a TDC mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ist; Avion Her­cules, THA mar­ket­ing man­ag­er along with over­seas rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom. The T&T team rep­re­sent­ed the des­ti­na­tion dur­ing tour op­er­a­tors and in­dus­try buy­ers' meet­ings, me­dia in­ter­views and spon­sored press con­fer­ence.

A re­lease from Perkins said: "CHTA Mar­ket­place is one of the most in­flu­en­tial re­gion spe­cif­ic tourism events of the year for des­ti­na­tions, ho­tels and tour op­er­a­tors. With our 50th an­niver­sary and new mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives, the TDC felt it nec­es­sary to make our pres­ence known with in­flu­en­tial tourism brand meet­ings and a spon­sored press lun­cheon for me­dia. We look for­ward to build­ing brand Trinidad and To­ba­go from our suc­cess­es at this con­fer­ence and mov­ing the tourism nee­dle in the right di­rec­tion." It was al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with top Caribbean tourism lead­ers to re­view and strate­gise mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives for 2012.

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The TDC del­e­ga­tion met with on­line trav­el com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Or­b­itz, Ex­pe­dia and Trav­e­loc­i­ty; tour op­er­a­tors British Air­ways Hol­i­days, Clas­sic Va­ca­tions and Air Cana­da Va­ca­tions; and jour­nal­ists from Is­lands Mag­a­zine, Black Meet­ings & Tourism, Trav­e­lAge West and Sell­ing Long Haul (UK). TDC al­so host­ed a press con­fer­ence/lun­cheon with over 40 me­dia from the US, UK, Eu­rope, Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca in at­ten­dance. The event gave the me­dia a chance to learn about mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives and pro­ject­ed tourism goals for 2012.

Al­so dur­ing Mar­ket­place Le Grand Courlan Spa Re­sort won Ex­pe­dia/Ho­tels.com 2011 Best Year on Year Growth, Small Ho­tel Award. Cel­e­brat­ing its 30th year, Caribbean Mar­ket­place, the largest Caribbean busi­ness to busi­ness con­fer­ence, of­fers whole­salers and tour op­er­a­tors the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with hote­liers, at­trac­tions and des­ti­na­tion of­fi­cials to plan and pre­pare pack­ages to ac­com­mo­date po­ten­tial va­ca­tion­ers.