Q & A with Hugh Riley, Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) Interim Secretary General

For quite a number of years, Hugh Riley acted as Marketing Director for the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) until he was appointed Interim Secretary General following the departure of Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace and the passing of Arley Sobers. In this exclusive interview with Caribbean News Digital in Bermuda, where he attended the Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Investment Conference (CHTIC), this seasoned industry professional talked about what his organization’s upcoming Caribbean Week in New York and the second Caribbean Tourism Summit slated for Washington DC, both events in the month of June, as well all major challenges for the region in terms of marketing and opportunities amid the ongoing financial crisis.

Q.- Let’s go a tad into Caribbean Week, when it’s going to take place and what new things you have in store for this year’s event?
A.- Caribbean Week in New York is from June 8th to 12th. It’s going to be an exciting event, it’ll demonstrate the color, the culture, the excitement and the special vacation offers of the Caribbean.

This year, we have put some innovations into it, so there is a rum and rhythm festival that wasn’t in Caribbean Week last year. There is going to be an event which will excite people about the opportunities for marketing the Caribbean, which wasn’t there last year. There is going to be a new twist to the governments of the Caribbean state ball, which is on the Friday night, June 12th, and that’s going to be, for the first time ever, at the Plaza Hotel in New York. It’s a black-tie affair which honors persons who’ve made significant contributions to the promotion of Caribbean tourism, that’s the government of the Caribbean state ball.

Caribbean Week in New York still has three very important objectives and those are: to create an opportunity for all of our member countries of the Caribbean Tourism Organization to promote themselves, their products and their services. It also needs to increase the awareness of the people of New York, and the people of the United States in general, to the excitement of the Caribbean; and it, of course, provides an opportunity for us to sell vacations to the Caribbean. We, of course, do actively sell those vacations, but it provides an opportunity for our travel partners, travel agencies, travel professionals and packagers to sell vacations to the Caribbean. So, Caribbean Week in New York is going to be a really very exciting event this year in New York City and we invite you and everyone here to participate.

Q.- What about the Summit in Washington DC?
A.- The Annual Caribbean Tourism Summit is going to be in Washington D.C in June.

Q.- Before the Caribbean Week?
A.- It precedes Caribbean Week and it provides an opportunity to for our leaders, the senior officials of Caribbean Tourism as well as some of the heads of governments of the Caribbean, to go to Washington D.C, the nation’s capital, and interact with members of the administration, our strategic partners, both the public sector and the private sector sides, and to interact also to the Caribbean Diaspora in Washington.

Q.- The VIPs of the Caribbean are going to be lobbying in Washington to see what they can get regarding passports and visa waivers, I mean, with all these new people there in Washington, right?
A.- I think it’s very important for us to two things when we go to Washington: one is to find out what the new administration is thinking in terms of tourism in general and Caribbean tourism in particular; and two, to speak a little bit about the things that affect us from the point of view of Caribbean tourism planners and marketers.

Q.- Is this is going to be a closed event or for the public in anyway?
A.- The public events will be concentrated in New York for Caribbean Week in New York.

Q.- What do you make of this CHTIC event in Bermuda?
A.- The Conference’s been quite interesting; it’s been fruitful. I believe that we’ve made many of the contacts and got the information we came here to get. I think that people who were at this conference, the financial and services personnel, the bankers and their representatives, the clients, the large corporations and the small ones; everyone understands that the Caribbean, like rest of the world, is facing challenges. We all understand that these challenges will probably continue for a little while yet, but we also know that there is opportunity and that’s why we’re here, that’s why the financial service people are here.

Everyone is tempering their optimism with a good dose of realism. So, we’re not been complacent, we’re not been foolishly optimistic; but we understand that there is opportunity in Caribbean tourism and we’re here to find it, we’re to take full advantage of it.

For us, at the Caribbean Tourism Organization, the conference has been extremely fruitful. We have no doubt that the results of this will prove that our time and our investment was well worthwhile.

Q.- You have been in your acting position in such a hard time. What do you think your achievements will be out of this crisis?
A.- One of the biggest challenges at this particular time is to deal with issues that are unfamiliar to us. No one’s been in a financial crisis that is quite as severe as the one the world is facing now. If you were around in the great depression in the United States in the 1930s, then you know a little bit about how to deal with this, but unless you were, the situation now is totally new for most of us.

What we’ve had to do, all of us in Caribbean tourism, both on the private sector and the public sector side, is to develop disciplines that will help us to do several things. First of all: to reduce the cost of our operation, to make sure that we are more efficient in everything that we do. Secondly: to find alternative sources of revenue. For us on the public sector side, we’ll had to look at donor agencies, we’ll had to look at international organizations, we’ll had to look at places that we wouldn’t normally look to fund some of the programs that need to get funding. We have had to do things that we normally would not do.

My hope is that those disciplines which we’ve all had to install in these times of stricture will not dissipate when things get good again.

Q.- Because of the ongoing crisis, everybody has to put a lot of efforts in their own agenda. So, what’s happening with the marketing?
A.- Marketing is one of the key things that will help through. We’ve all looked at the service, we’ve all looked at the research that shows what happens to brands in times of recession.

The bottom line is that you have to show confidence in your brand if you expect anybody else to. If we have to stay visible, we have to be as aggressive as we can be in marketing our brands, we have to be as aggressive as we can be in staying competitive as far as costs concern, which doesn’t mean ridiculous discounting, but it does mean making sure that we are ahead of our competition. The marketing can not lie behind. The many of our member countries have, in fact, been quite aggressive about marketing their own destinations.

What our job is at the Caribbean Tourism Organization is to make sure that, as a region, the Caribbean brand continues to be marketed strongly because we have to make sure that all of our 33 members countries are able to benefit from the visibility and the strength of that Caribbean brand.

Q.- What about your website? Are you happy with the work that has been done lately?
A.- The website is developing nicely. CaribbeanTravel.com has the hot deals on it, we’re replenishing those on a regular basis. CaribbeanTravel.com is now catering with meaningful, helpful information to a travel agency. You just go there and log in. CaribbeanTravel.com has become a more important source of visitation, leading traffic to our member countries’ websites and the hotels’ websites. CaribbeanTravel.com has become a more meaningful source of information for visitors who are planning vacations on the Caribbean. CaribbeanTravel.com, like any good website, is evolving everyday, every week; it’s changing into something that the consumers want it to become.