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Sunday, July 27, 2025

TDC CEO: New markets for meeting facilities

by

20140612

T&T is in a po­si­tion to take an im­por­tant re­gion­al role in the meet­ings, in­cen­tives, con­fer­ences and ex­hi­bi­tions (MICE) mar­ket, Yolande Sel­man, act­ing CEO of the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (TDC), said yes­ter­day."As the gate­way to the Amer­i­c­as, T&T is poised to seize the myr­i­ad of op­por­tu­ni­ties that the MICE mar­ket of­fers. It is no se­cret that we are the place to do busi­ness and with in­dus­try pre­dic­tions in­di­cat­ing that the MICE sec­tor is poised for vig­or­ous growth, this pub­li­ca­tion is time­ly for our des­ti­na­tion," she said.Sel­man spoke yes­ter­day at the launch of the Meet­ing Plan­ners' Guide at Movi­eTowne. The guide, an ini­tia­tive of the T&T Con­ven­tion Bu­reau, a unit of the TDC, of­fers a com­pre­hen­sive guide and au­thor­i­ta­tive in­for­ma­tion re­source for both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ing plan­ners.

Sel­man said with a pro­ject­ed growth in busi­ness ar­rivals for T&T, meet­ing fa­cil­i­ties have gained a new mar­ket."As the agency charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to mar­ket and pro­mote T&T's tourism prod­uct, the TDC's over­ar­ch­ing aim is for our coun­try to stay abreast of the fierce com­pe­ti­tion," she said."We aim to en­sure that meet­ing plan­ners in­ter­est­ed in T&T have at their fin­ger­tips read­i­ly avail­able in­for­ma­tion on meet­ing fa­cil­i­ties, ser­vice providers and recre­ation­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, as des­ti­na­tions which of­fer spaces for busi­ness in a re­laxed set­ting are grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty."

TDC chair­man Umesh Ram­per­sad said the Glob­al Busi­ness Trav­el As­so­ci­a­tion pre­dict­ed in a re­cent re­port that com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als will spend a record break­ing US$1 tril­lion on busi­ness trips this year with the fig­ure pro­ject­ed to rise in the years ahead."The T&T Meet­ing Plan­ners Guide is an in­valu­able in­stru­ment and a key­stone mo­ment in our un­re­lent­ing dri­ve to firm­ly po­si­tion this des­ti­na­tion as the leader in meet­ings and con­ven­tions in the re­gion," he said.Ram­per­sad said the TDC con­tin­ues to mar­ket T&T as the place to do busi­ness."We in­deed mean busi­ness and demon­strates our com­mit­ment to the in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence and events mar­ket where the busi­ness trav­eller stays longer than the av­er­age tourist and spends five to six times more," he said.The TDC chair­man said many large cities around the world like Las Ve­gas, Hous­ton, Lon­don and Tokyo have meet­ings' plan­ners guides. He boast­ed that T&T's is the first in the Caribbean re­gion."It is al­so more com­pre­hen­sive than most as we have cho­sen to high­light our des­ti­na­tion as a whole, but with­in the con­text of adding val­ue to the agen­da of both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ings plan­ners," Ram­per­sad said.


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