The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) and the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) are to re-launch the marketing and business development unit, the Caribbean Tourism Development Company (CTDC), a jointly owned and private-operated, profitable entity created in 2007.

The revitalised CTDC will market the Caribbean brand through licensing, merchandising, advertising, and the sale of vacations via its website.

The website, which will be redesigned, will include among other features, an integrated booking platform that specifically caters to the Caribbean’s smaller hotels.

One of the “new” CTDC’s emphases in the initial stages will be on reviving intra-Caribbean vacation travel. Funding for the CTDC will come from both the public and private sectors, with the joint owners each committing seed funding to be supplemented by CTO member countries.

The new CTDC board of directors will comprise six members each from the CTO and the CHTA, with the leaders of the two organizations – CTO chairman Richard Skerritt and CHTA president Josef Forstmayr - as co-chairs.

The Caribbean Tourism Development Company (CTDC) is a marketing and business development unit, owned equally by the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA) and the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO).

Its mission is to own, promote, protect, advance and enhance the Caribbean brand.

The CTDC combines the resources of the Caribbean region’s destinations, accommodations and service providers to create a viable, cohesive, business unit that is able to identify commercial opportunities and allow the members of CHTA and CTO to benefit collectively from those opportunities in ways that individually they could not.

In all its endeavours the company will engage only in activities that honour the Caribbean brand and benefit the members of CHTA and CTO.