Holiday & Travel

Community support, environmental stewardship and national pride are the pillars of Lyton and Eroline Lamontagne’s decades-long careers. Both born in Soufrière, St. Lucia, the couple met in 1980 and made their foray into hospitality with a restaurant and boutique at the former Jalousie Plantation. 

In 1988, the Lamontagnes took a step further into the food industry with Eroline Foods, a frozen food outlet named after Mrs. Lamontagne.

The fifth annual TravMedia Summit Australia, sponsored by Visit Europe, brought together 300 Australian and New Zealand travel writers, editors, influencers, broadcast journalists and international and domestic travel and tourism brands for a fantastic day of networking, learning and development.

The Summit is part of TravMedia's International Media Marketplace (IMM), the leading media networking event for the travel industry, now in its 11th year.

Former president of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism and Association (CHTA) Patricia Affonso-Dass believes the 41st annual Caribbean Travel Marketplace, to be held in Barbados May 9-11, can be a defining moment for the travel trade body.

The Barbados-based hotelier, who runs Ocean Hotels Group on the island, said Caribbean Travel Marketplace has special significance this year because “it represents and showcases our region’s and association’s ability to transform, change and reinvent to meet the ever-changing needs, demands and realities of this dynamic industry.”

Positioning itself among the leading island destination in Africa, Zanzibar is aiming to attract almost one million visitors in next two years, banking on its rich heritage and historical sites, plus warm beaches and marine resources.

Zanzibar government is now upgrading tourism infrastructure including expansion of roads and improvement of Abeid Amani Karume International Airport (AAKIA) together with other projects.

A comprehensive year-long study that included interviews with more than 1,600 travellers to Puerto Rico indicates that visitors to the Spanish-speaking U.S. territory enjoyed their travel experience.

Discover Puerto Rico announced that a highlight of the study’s findings is that 98 percent of visitors were satisfied with their experience on the island, with 95 percent estimating they will return in the future.

A leading Caribbean tourism official wants to see Caribbean nationals derive more benefits from the tourism industry, leading to greater generational wealth for residents of the region.

Speaking at the first Global Tourism Resilience Conference, which was held in Kingston, Jamaica last week, Jamaican hotelier Nicola Madden-Greig said this goal can be achieved by focusing on building an entrepreneurial class and through the continued strengthening of small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises.

As Curaçao continues to shatter tourism records, one of the region’s leading tourism executives opines that the Curaçao Tourist Board (CTB) might be a model for others to follow, given its significant achievement in using data and analytics to overcome market challenges.

The Dutch Caribbean destination recently reported close to a half-million stayover visitors in 2022 and there’s no letting up, with January 2023 arrivals eclipsing the 2022 number by a whopping 35 percent.

The results of a new study, revealing the safest places in Europe to travel to, were released today. The study analysed 9 metrics that contribute towards how safe an area may be such as homicides, assaults, road fatalities, natural disaster risk, and global peace index, to find which European country is the safest.

According to the latest data from Trip.com Group (Ctrip), Chinese multinational online travel company that provides services including accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, packaged tours and corporate travel management, bookings by Chinese tourists traveling to foreign destinations spiked by 640% during the Lunar New Year festival vs the same period last year, while foreign hotel bookings have quadrupled.

The Caribbean’s travel and tourism industry is no doubt making a strong rebound, and while results vary, some destinations are recording even more impressive results than the 2019 banner tourism year.

During the Caribbean Tourism Organisation’s (CTO) business meetings in Curaçao last week, many of the region’s tourism directors, ministers and commissioners of tourism spoke about the exciting state of the industry, replete with opportunities for stakeholders, not the least of whom are the residents of the Caribbean.

As global tourism stakeholders and policymakers commemorate the first official Global Tourism Resilience Day, Minister of Tourism, Hon Edmund Bartlett today issued a call for the creation of a global tourism resilience fund to support tourism-dependent nations in periods of disruption.
 
The call came as key players in tourism from around the world, including the Caribbean and Africa, devoted the third day of the first-ever Global Tourism Resilience Conference to continuing discussions on the: Road to Global Sustainability and Development. Minister Bartlett expressed that “while we talk about building resilience for tourism we have to focus in the wider perspective on social, economic, political, health and security disruptions.”

Adriana Peña, wearing the costume Lisboa, designed by Santi Castro, is the Queen of the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife 2023. The candidate was crowned during a gala held last night at the International Trade Fair and Congress Centre of the capital.

The court of honour of the Tenerife Carnival is completed by the first lady, Hirisley Jiménez, with Metamorphosis (designed by Daniel Pages); Laura Fernández, with Así soy – this is me - (Sedomir Rodríguez); Carmen Hibner, Un mar de consciencia – sea of consciousness - (Alfonso Baute) and Marta Santana, with Historia de una reina – the story of a queen - (Alexis Santana).

The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) on February 15, 2023, announced the winners of the Caribbean Sustainable Tourism Awards Competition 2022 at a Virtual Awards Function. CTO has been hosting the Caribbean Sustainable Tourism Awards from 2000 to coincide with the start of the new millennium, in seeking to support and promote the sustainable development of tourism in the Caribbean.

Two of Antigua and Barbuda’s major source markets are driving a robust tourism recovery for the twin-island destination.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s business meetings in Curaçao last week, Colin James, Chief Executive Officer of the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority, reports that while the tourism sector recovered 88 percent of its 2019 business last year, both the United States and the United Kingdom had registered record levels of stayover arrivals in 2022.

As the tourism sector across the Caribbean registers strong post-pandemic results, the 25-member Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) is resuming several hallmark activities and events this year to help strengthen the region’s position as the world’s leading warm-weather destination.

Following business meetings in Curaçao last week, where ministers, commissioners and directors of tourism and their representatives met together as well as with tourism industry stakeholders, CTO chair Kenneth Bryan announced that 2023 will see the return of ‘Caribbean Week in New York’ in June, the State of the Industry Conference (SOTIC) in the Turks & Caicos Islands in the fall, and a conference focused on sustainable tourism development.

Curaçao, one of the Caribbean’s top performing tourism destinations, is playing host to leading tourism decision makers.

Ruisandro Cijntje, Curaçao’s Minister of Economic Development, welcomed directors, ministers and commissioners of tourism to the multilingual island as delegates prepared to attend the Caribbean Tourism Organisation’s (CTO) first business meetings of the year.