HOTELIERS ACROSS the Caribbean are now able to take advantage of an important marketing tool, with little or no output costs.
According to the Caribbean Hotel Association Charitable Trust (CHACT), the body mandated to market the Caribbean with a single voice, with immediate effect, the entire membership of the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA) will be eligible to list its inventory on the CHACT online travel site (www.gocaribbean.com) and benefit from both website and tele-sales through the toll-free service 1-888-CARIBBEAN.
CHACT chairman, Ralph Taylor said the decision was made to widen the programme's benefits to more Caribbean hotels through on-line sign-ups.
"This will help drive much more business to the Caribbean in 2003," he said.
Expedia Inc's private label solution, Worldwide Travel Exchange, provides the booking engine and handles in-bound tele-sales, customer support and travel inventory to the travel site. In a user-friendly online environment, hoteliers are able to manage their room allotments and rates depending on current or projected occupancies. CHA member hotels that are currently engaged with Expedia are automatically part of programme, while other CHA member hotels can join with the click of a mouse. Both CHA and CHACT membership options are available at www.gocaribbean.com (click on 'about CHACT').
CHACT is a public/private sector amalgamation of major hotel chains, airlines and credit card companies which have joined forces with both Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and non-CARICOM nations to market and promote the Caribbean as a single destination. A regional fund has enabled the launch of a television campaign dubbed Life Needs The Caribbean. The campaign was launched in August this year and will resume early next year.
The overall intent of the campaign is to brand the Caribbean and provide a solid platform for competition with other regions in global tourism. Eighteen destinations are participating in the campaign. They are Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts/Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Maarten, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and the United States Virgin Islands.
