Navis tourism chief: Revenues up 42 percent

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Written by Linda Hohnholz

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nevis Tourism Authority (NTA) Greg Phillip said that Nevis tourism revenues are 42 percent ahead of last year’s revenue pace.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nevis Tourism Authority (NTA) Greg Phillip said that Nevis tourism revenues are 42 percent ahead of last year’s revenue pace. While he admitted that “We do not have concrete visitor statistics at this point,” he added that this year’s marketing efforts “have yielded an estimated increase in visitor arrivals.”

“The increased revenue statistics are based on the 2 percent tourism levy collected to fund the activities of the NTA,” he said.

In an interview with the Department of Information last Friday (Aug. 1), Mr. Phillip listed a number of initiatives the Authority had taken that were showing success in attracting visitors to Nevis. Among those initiatives is a new video advertisement about the Nevis product.

“We have ramped up our marketing activities and because of that there are many times when we get requests: ‘Do we have a television ad? Do we have video footage that we can actually use to help promote the island of Nevis?’ We now have one and we are quite pleased with it and are about to put it in the public domain for a number of uses,” he said.

Phillip described the new advertisement as one which emphasized the fact that Nevis was a unique destination that could not be compared with any other in the region.

“The ad plays on the fact that we recognise that there is a lot of misconceptions out there about the Caribbean and the fact that many people seem to think that all the islands in the Caribbean are the same,” he explained. “The food is the same. The music is the same. The feel is the same.

“What we are doing with this ad is playing on this misconception and sending a strong message that Nevis is not like the rest of the Caribbean and the way we are really doing that is bringing out some of the highlights about Nevis, letting everyone know that Nevis is unlike the rest of the Caribbean,” he said.

Another initiative the NTA has underway is an increase in the frequency and number of familiarization trips for travel professionals and media trips for journalists from travel publications, both online and in print. In addition, the NTA has implemented an annual Month of Romance in June promotion, as well as the annual Celebration of Mangos in July.

According to Mr. Philip, the attention to travel media journalists is paying off with an increase in the number of articles being published about Nevis. “The articles have been appearing in online media like Caribbean Journal, print magazines like Departures, and Ebony Magazine, and newspapers like the Telegraph and Dallas Morning News,” he told The Observer.

Among the marketing firms assisting the NTA, Mr. Phillip said, are the PMGroup in North America, Zurdo Advertising and Promotions in Puerto Rico, and Sponge Marketing in the UK.

In his comments last week, the Authority’s CEO said the NTA’s promotional work is taking various forms and presenting many challenges, among them a renovation of the NTA’s Nevis Visitor Centre and an increase in staff travel.

“The downstairs (of the Visitor Centre) is the first place that we are working on because, essentially, what we are doing is building a true Visitor Centre for the island of Nevis, to ensure that when the droves of tourists that we get coming into our building, that they have every opportunity to know and feel and understand what is available on the island of Nevis for them to partake of.”

He said he expects the renovation to be completed within a month. “This Visitor Centre is really going to help to not only showcase Nevis but bring the tourist into contact with Nevis and expose them to things that they are able to do on Nevis, expose them in a very special and specific way to motivate them and also to help them to book whether its dinner, excursions, whatever,” he said.

He further explained that increased staff travel is necessary in order to “make sure that we are reaching the people who we need to, all the travel professionals who would send people to Nevis.

“We are quite comfortable for the first time in the promotion of Nevis,” he added. “We now have professionals on board with us in various parts of the world that we consider our major source markets.”.

Phillip added that the NTA was also using an airline consultant from a U.S.-based company to assist with airlift issues.

“Airlift is completely critical to our tourism industry,” he offered. “It includes conversations and opportunities that we can secure with international carriers, even though they do not fly into Nevis. It’s critically important to have somebody on board who knows and understands the language and who is an expert in that field. .”

Overall, Mr. Phillip said, “We are quite pleased that all the work we have been doing has begun to pay off. These initiatives, whether it be our international push or specifically with the folks we have working for us internationally, we have seen it begin to pay off.”

About the author

Avatar of Linda Hohnholz

Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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