Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad Tourism Ltd (TTL) has re­vealed that it is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing po­ten­tial av­enues to syn­er­gise the mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion of the coun­try as a des­ti­na­tion with the is­land’s en­ter­tain­ment artistes.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions posed by Guardian Me­dia, act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of TTL, Hei­di Alert said: “We are present­ly ex­plor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties with sev­er­al artistes as cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors for our in­ter­na­tion­al pro­mo­tion­al cam­paigns.”

This rev­e­la­tion comes on the heels of re­cent Verzuz bat­tle be­tween two Caribbean artistes that gained in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion. Alert com­ment­ed: “This tremen­dous syn­er­gy be­tween tourism and en­ter­tain­ment was very ev­i­dent in the Memo­r­i­al Day Sound­clash Edi­tion of Swizz Beatz and Tim­ba­land’s flag­ship IG Live se­ries be­tween Bee­nie Man and Boun­ty Kil­la.”

As it was viewed by over 500,000 view­ers and with up to 3.7 mil­lion peo­ple go­ing in and out of the live ses­sion, Alert not­ed that the sound clash was eas­i­ly the most ex­cit­ing and en­ter­tain­ing and fur­ther ce­ment­ed Brand Ja­maica (some may even state, Brand One Caribbean glob­al­ly).

Alert al­so high­light­ed the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy dur­ing the cur­rent pan­dem­ic and its abil­i­ty to cre­ate new pos­si­bil­i­ties. She said: “With the sig­nif­i­cant up­take of vir­tu­al tech­nol­o­gy, the po­ten­tial for tak­ing our mu­sic “in­ter­na­tion­al” is tremen­dous.”

She con­tin­ued: “Per­haps this is one of the pos­i­tive take­aways from our COVID-19 ex­pe­ri­ence; cre­at­ing more pow­er­ful, in­no­v­a­tive long-term plans by in­vest­ing in tech­nol­o­gy that cre­ates new au­di­ences across con­ti­nents.”

Al­so re­spond­ing to ques­tions by GML was di­rec­tor for Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca at Bar­ba­dos Tourism Mar­ket­ing In­cor­po­rat­ed, Corey H Gar­rett.

When asked about how much of Bar­ba­dos’ tourism mar­ket­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing is geared to­wards the pro­mo­tion of the en­ter­tain­ment cul­ture he not­ed: “A size­able pro­por­tion of the BT­MI’s mar­ket­ing bud­get goes to­wards sup­port of the en­ter­tain­ment, cul­ture and the cre­ative econ­o­my.”

He added that this is shown by its con­sid­er­able pro­mo­tion­al sup­port and part­ner­ship fund­ing di­rect­ed each year to­wards var­i­ous events such as Crop Over, Bar­ba­dos Reg­gae Fes­ti­val, Gospel Fes­ti­val, Nani­ki Jazz Fes­ti­val, and nu­mer­ous oth­er mu­sic events.

Gar­rett added: “BT­MI pro­motes and show­cas­es lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment tal­ent by tak­ing it in to our ma­jor source mar­kets, in­clud­ing, mu­si­cal tal­ent, mixol­o­gist, and chef demon­stra­tions at ma­jor events such as Bar­ba­dos on the Wa­ter.”

Mean­while, Alert said that there is a very nat­ur­al syn­er­gy be­tween T&T en­ter­tain­ment and its tourism. She not­ed that T&T has a rich and di­verse her­itage and cul­ture while em­pha­sis­ing that the coun­try’s mu­sic—be it pan, ca­lyp­so or so­ca—is heard all over the world with icons such as Ca­lyp­so Rose and Machel Mon­tano com­man­deer­ing le­gions of fans.

Alert said that the or­gan­i­sa­tion recog­nis­es the pow­er of en­ter­tain­ers to reach mil­lions of fol­low­ers and help pro­mote the des­ti­na­tion. She gave the ex­am­ple of the in­cred­i­ble cov­er­age gen­er­at­ed from Trinidad-born US star Nic­ki Mi­naj at­tend­ing Car­ni­val 2020. Mi­naj has over 150mil­lion fol­low­ers on In­sta­gram alone.

Alert ex­pressed that TTL has con­tin­u­al­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with a wide range of the coun­try’s cre­atives to pro­mote Des­ti­na­tion Trinidad. She said: “Our cre­ative tal­ents are what set our small is­land na­tion apart and are the sto­ry­tellers who con­vey our sto­ry in a unique and mem­o­rable way; be it through word, mu­sic or de­sign.”

Con­certs of sev­er­al of T&T’s artistes have been ad­ver­tised on TTL’s dig­i­tal plat­forms as well, said Alert.

Dur­ing the COVID-19 stay at home pe­ri­od, she ex­pressed that TTL has sup­port­ed and pro­mot­ed sev­er­al vir­tu­al live con­certs in­clud­ing Car­ifes­ta Is­land Beats Con­cert and the 2019 edi­tion of North Coast Jazz.

She al­so not­ed that Nailah Black­man took over the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s IG Page (@Book­Trinidad) “to pro­vide a taste of Trinidad to hun­dreds of her loy­al fans.”

Alert added that TTL has been col­lab­o­rat­ing with cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­ers to in­form and ed­u­cate T&T artistes on mu­sic leg­is­la­tion, copy­right and to put in place a frame­work, which fa­cil­i­tates re­gion­al and glob­al suc­cess.