Interview with Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, Secretary-General, Caribbean Tourism Organization

Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, Secretary-General, Caribbean Tourism Organization says historically, tourism in the region has progressed from “winter” tourism to year round tourism and it is continuing.

“In fact, most of the growth in business that we see in future will come from a much more even utilization of our tourism infrastructure across the year and an elimination of the so called “High” and “Low” seasons. A second major advance that has happened over the last year is the collaboration between the Caribbean Hotel Association and the Caribbean Tourism Organization to present a single face for the Caribbean behind a single logo and single brand. Needless to say, much of what we are doing will take full advantage of the internet, the most important infrastructure advance for tourism development since the jet airplane,” says Vanderpool-Wallace told EyeforTravel.com’s Ritesh Gupta. Excerpts from the interview:

How do you assess progress made by tourism as a sector in the Caribbean region?

You should know first of all that we are moving away from simple head counts of visitors in determining tourism success to looking at economic and social benefits instead. Frankly, some of our member states are so small that it is impossible to see them growing continually on the basis of numbers of visitors compared to much larger destinations.

Taken from this point of view, that general acknowledgement is a significant advance for our region and whenever we look at tourism’s importance and impact from an overall economic point of view, it is clear that in most cases we have been underestimating that impact. So overall we are pleased with our progress.

What have been the major changes from distribution perspective in this region? How has online distribution as a channel made progress?

Very clearly, all that we are doing reflects the embrace of the Internet by our prospective customers. There is now much evidence that those customers have a high regard for destination web sites. There is growing evidence that more and more customers are comfortable making their commercial arrangements over the Internet so we are enabling those transactions through our web sites.

In addition, however, we are also certain that travel agents will continue to be very important to the Caribbean so we ensuring that they are accommodated as effectively as possible in all of our plans.

So the distribution of information and the booking mechanisms are causing a significant shift in the way that we do business throughout our region. More products are now available to the traveling public than ever before and we are ensuring that the traveling public is provided with the kind of information that will allow them to book our products with confidence.

What changes have you witnessed in the way suppliers approach consumers?

Many of our suppliers have done the cost benefit analysis which shows clearly that the provision of information through web sites allows them to be much more flexible and completely up to date as compared to the traditional methods of printing brochures. So the savings from a reduction in the printing budgets have been redirected to the creation and maintenance of their web sites. There is also much effort going into search engine optimisation to ensure that products are ranked high on the list of choices whenever consumers are looking for vacation products. In fact, many of us are restructuring our organisations around the Internet rather than seeing it as simply another distribution tool.

How is the behaviour of consumers changing as far as planning and buying travel requirements is concerned?

Much of this has been covered before. Clearly the Internet is here to stay. Consumers are going there to see photographs, videos, music, text, advertising and booking vacations. So in effect, by sitting in front of a computer, the consumer can now begin their exploration and conclude their purchases in one place.

How do you assess growth of online travel intermediaries and meta-search engines in the Caribbean region? How is it posing threat to traditional channels?

There is no question that disintermediation of traditional channels is underway to a very large degree as a result if the online booking and search engines. Still most, if not all of those traditional channels will continue to adapt and survive though in much diminished numbers and size.