Min­is­ter of Tourism Stephen Cadiz is in the Ba­hamas for the Caribbean Trav­el Mar­ket­place and to con­vene with the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CTO) Avi­a­tion Com­mit­tee and dis­cuss op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­crease of air­lift to the re­gion. The min­is­ter, up­on land­ing at the Lyn­don Pin­dling In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, head­ed di­rect­ly to a meet­ing of the Coun­cil of Tourism Min­is­ters and Com­mis­sion­ers of the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion at the At­lantis Par­adise Is­land Re­sort.

The main pur­pose of the Avi­a­tion Com­mit­tee is to en­cour­age, cham­pi­on and in­form fa­cil­i­ta­tion of air trans­porta­tion in­to and through­out the Caribbean with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on the mem­ber coun­tries of the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion, of which T&T is a mem­ber.

The CTO Avi­a­tion Com­mit­tee was con­ceived in a back­drop of dy­nam­ic glob­al and re­gion­al tourism which is in­flu­enced by the avail­abil­i­ty, af­ford­abil­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy of air trans­porta­tion. In no re­gion more than the Caribbean, with its high de­pen­den­cy on tourism, are the is­sues of air trans­porta­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al and in­tra-re­gion­al air trav­el more chal­leng­ing.

The first tech­ni­cal meet­ing of the Avi­a­tion Com­mit­tee is sched­uled for Jan­u­ary 30 in An­tigua with a fo­cus on air­line and air­port op­er­a­tors. The Caribbean Trav­el Mar­ket­place is a pre­mier trav­el sym­po­sium that pairs sup­pli­ers (ho­tels, at­trac­tions, tourist boards, restau­rants and trans­porta­tion com­pa­nies) with buy­ers (tour op­er­a­tors, whole­salers), to con­duct ne­go­ti­a­tions that ben­e­fit the re­gion.

Caribbean Trav­el Mar­ket­place 2013 ends to­day.