The Caribbean is a world known brand, yet at the same time an un-owned brand. Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace the CTO secretary general has ideas to alter this and has said; “It is the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO)‘s intention to own the Caribbean brand as we aim to find ways to leverage the region’s advantages for the benefit of all its people.“He will outline how the regional tourism body intends to achieve this when he addresses the opening session of the 28th Annual Caribbean Tourism Conference (CTC-28) in the United States Virgin Islands in October.

Through his presentation entitled, The Business of Tourism: View from the Top, Mr.
Vanderpool-Wallace will introduce a fresh new style, vision and business focus to the conference with recommendations on how collectively, the Caribbean can own and profit from the brand.

“I intend to give people a sense of where we see Caribbean tourism going over the long term and how we intend to get there,” the secretary general said.

“We will declare where we are going. We will be talking about our business plan for the entire tourism sector from the CTO perspective to make sure that everybody has a clear understanding of what it is and when we publish it they can go back and refer to it and see how we are performing in terms of what we said we were going to do,” he added.

The CTO, working with the USVI, has planned a programme designed to appeal to a broader audience than has been done in the past.

One of the changes is the introduction of “MasterClasses” at which delegates will get to advance their skills in a number of critical areas.

“Through these MasterClasses delegates can leave the conference with a good sense that they are beginning to master an area that’s very important to tourism development,” Mr. Vanderpool-Wallace stated.

“I think also we will begin to attract a number of our colleagues from the private sector who will come and see how they can become one with the public sector in terms of moving Caribbean tourism forward together,” he said.

The MasterClasses will cover crisis communications, technology, transportation and events management. The programme is designed to allow delegates to register for one or more MasterClasses or for the entire conference.

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