Selma Brown, Director of CTO USA; Johnson Johnrose, CTO Communications Specialist & CTO Chair Beverly
Raj Pahwa, proudly receiving her award
The CTO annual luncheon
It’s no secret that the Caribbean is huge with Canadian travellers, past, present and future. (What client doesn’t have a villa vacation on their bucket list?) So it was a pleasure to experience a little of that mutual love at the Caribbean Tourism Organization press conference, marketplace and luncheon in Toronto.
The festivities included recognizing Raj Pahwa as Travel Agent of the Year. Pahwa, President of AbsoluteWedSite in Vaughan, Ont., was praised for her devotion and knowledge of the region and for sending hundreds of travellers to the Caribbean every year.
Chair of the CTO and Commissioner of Tourism for the U.S. Virgin Islands Beverly Nicholson-Doty expressed appreciation for all that Canadians bring to the region – the most tourism-dependent region in the world. “In the 1st quarter of the year we saw 1.3 million visits from Canadians, up 3.3% from last year,” she told the group, adding that U.S. visits were up only 1.3% for that period.
There are 30 countries in the CTO (to qualify for membership a country needs to border the Caribbean, so the organization represents not just islands, but also some countries in South and Central America). 15 of them are reporting “significant growth” from Canada, including the British Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic and Belize. And Alison Theodore of St. Lucia told me that Canadian arrivals to her country were up almost 16%year over year in January alone.
Interestingly , the organization is investigating the option of facilitating travel within the region, EU style (seamless borders, show your passport only once). As Nicholson-Doty reminded us, each country is so distinct and CTO is doing its best to encourage multi-island travel. And in a lovely and touching moment, she thanked Canadians “on behalf of the thousands of people who are dependent on tourism in the Caribbean.”
