Once upon a time, tourism marketing would mean fancy spreads in glossy magazines - but in the 21st century it's all about digital marketing, and suability in social media streams.
That's why the BTB's annual Digital Marketing Summit has become a marquee event - pulling in tourism interests from every corner of the country to the Biltmore.
This year's Summit was divided into two sections: one concentrating content marketing and the other focused on media marketing and how these strategies and techniques can be applied in the different tourism sectors. We spoke with Perry Bodden, the BTB Digital Marketing Strategist who helped organize the event, and one of the attendees.
Perry Bodden, BTB Digital Marketing Strategist
"So this is our 8th Annual digital marketing summit and what we've put together is that we have some of the best international and local presenters in the marketing field, the digital marketing field. To update the industry and not only the tourism industry but Belize about what's the latest and greatest innovations in marketing digital marketing social media marketing influencer marketing."
"A good example is our AI generated MC so we named her Tori. So Tori is our virtual MC for today and Tori is AI generated fully so voice her overall aesthetics her look and field everything was AI generated so that's one of the big topics here at the digital marketing summit just how we as digital marketers or marketeers in general can apply AI in our everyday jobs to make us more efficient at the end of the day."
Victor Manjarres, President of TM Americas
"We began our journey with Belize on June 1st during this time we have been focused on researching on all segments on the travel trade digital world and we see that there is a great potential in this market we've been working in several fronts from communication training and education if the travel trade also with educating and promoting to the general public and as well as doing some efforts to support BTBs work in getting additional airlift into belize which is a key factor in order to get some development. So the general feeling from all the segments is that we are very interested and there is a lack of knowledge about Belize in the region and that's why we are initially focusing on all the campaigns on educating on the distribution channels as well as the consumer. So our digital campaign is going to start the second week of September and it is really focused on telling the public what Belize is all about and what is unique about Belize. They can come and enjoy and have the best vacation experience."
