Tomorrow the Belize Tourism Industry Association will hold it=s 21st annual general meeting. As a prelude to the AGM the BTB held a seminar today. This year the theme was security; timely because over the past year, the tourism industry in Cayo was preyed upon by armed bandits. With that very real threat as the backdrop, everyone was paying keen attention to the Israeli security expert who facilitated the event. Alfonso Noble has more.
Lucy Fleming, BTIA President
"We decided to really focus on security because we know it is something that is on everyone's minds. Obviously we've got escalating crime, we can't hide from it, it is here and the only way that we are going to combat it is to face it. Look it straight in the eye and figure out ways how we can protect ourselves, our children, our employees, and of course our guests coming to Belize."
One tourism operator that had to deal with that problem even before today's seminar is Julian Sherrard. His resort in the Cayo District was robbed and now he says he's had to make security adjustments.
Julian Sherrard,
"After the robbery that we had, we thought about it in great detail, obviously when you are in a situation like that you replay the events time and time again. We've made a lot of changes at Black Rock including outside of Black Rock, working with the government, with the police more, with the BDF more, to try to catch the guys who are doing it."
And that's what Israeli Yuval Eliahou Director of a security firm in Guatemala is telling BTIA members: that they should be working with authorities to secure their interests without using guns.
Yuval Eliahou,
"We are taking the security from the point of view that we're trying
to understand the motives of the criminals and we find out that we can stop the criminals from the moment that they are coming to investigate or to get the information on how to commit their act, to make their move. We are using like a operational force, the police, but what we do is we give the police the information in real time so everybody knows the police in Guatemala is not so active but believe it or not, we have reaction from the police in three or four minutes. Why? Because we give them the call at the moment and we tell them we have these people who we suspect before they do the act, before they are ready because our people are trained to detect criminals the moment they get to the scene, before they make the act."
And Sherrard says for the tourism industry in Belize and in particular in the Cayo district that is already working, but there's still a lot to be done.
Julian Sherrard,
"The tourism community came together and pooled our money in order to help the police, help the military. The BTB pitched in, BTIA, BTIA Cayo, BHA. All these different groups got together, all these different hoteliers and restaurateurs, they put in their money into this thing and I think we've accomplished quite a bit. There is still a lot to be done. We've actually caught a number of people when we started helping the police in giving them the resources that they need and this is really is the crux of the matter. It is that the police and the military do not have the resources that they need. We have to, as a government, as a people, we have to make sure that they have the resources."
Lucy Fleming,
"I can quite confidently say that Cayo District now is safer than it ever was before. Why? Because private sector and public sector really joined forces to work together to annihilate a risk which was affecting all of us."
BTIA's annual general meeting will be held tomorrow at the Biltmore.
