We've already seen television ads for Belize on CNN Headline News and Fox Sports, but now you can expect to see Belize promoted in a whole new way. In the final leg of what has been the most aggressive international marketing campaign, the product Belize has ever been the beneficiary of, the Tourism Board will be turning to the internet to promote Belize. Hoping to catch the attention of the 544 million people who are online globally, the tourism board has launched a three part plan to get the internet community to visit Belize. Minister of Tourism Mark Espat says that first they will get visibility on all major sites:
Hon. Mark Espat
The first is to do a major promotion of Belize using Belize ads, banners, buttons, internet connections to some of the major related travel websites such as the aol.com, expedia.com, gork.com, google.com, and others and we are going to make a push to expose Belize to the over 540 million internet users, the people that are on-line world-wide. Secondly, we are going to make a major push in conjunction with US Airways on the internet, promote the new flight from charlotte to Belize City that starts in November. And third, we are going to be re-doing what is already an award-winning website, the travelbelize.org website. So the major plank of our marketing effort for this fiscal year will be internet based. If you look at the demographics of people who are on-line, they're well-educated, they earn an average of over $75,000.00, they are interested in eco or ethno tourism, market issues that Belize specializes in. I think that the profile complements each other. The profile of those using the on-line services and those we wish to come to Belize. So we are confident that this program will have positive results as those in the past several years have.
Jules Vasquez
There's the old saying that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And according to you all, the T.V. ads did work in the last year or the last two years. Why change it?
Hon. Mark Espat
Well, I think we have to change in a changing environment. We have to keep seeing how we can get more for the money we are investing. I think we have to start looking at the market, statistics, the demographics to see how we can keep growing and I think that the way to do that is to keep reflecting and changing the way you do things. I really believe that the mix we had this year will improve upon that which we've had in the last three, three and a half years and if we find out that it is not going as well as we want to we can always change direction.
The campaign will run for 6 to 8 months when a totoal of 1.5 million dollars of a 5 million dollar marketing budget will be spent on promoting Belize.