Wednesday, March 31, 2010Tourism Ad Reaping Rewards

Keva Lightbourne Tourism's Near $10m Ad Budget Reaping Rewards

The Ministry of Tourism's near $10 million budget for advertising the Islands of The Bahamas externally is reaping good rewards for the country, Tourism Director General Vernice Walkine said yesterday.

"This year we had just under $10 million. That is not bad. It has given us an opportunity to promote during many more weeks of the year than we might ordinarily have done, and so we have been able to buy smarter and extend the buy and generate some incremental spots and that sort of thing through good negotiating and all of that," Walkine said while speaking with members of the media following yesterday's news conference to announce a joint partnership between Caribbean Bottling Company and the Downtown Nassau Partnership to transform historic and prominent buildings in the downtown area.

"That is why you have seen us so much on the air and we bought national cable (time) which is really the first time we have done that. So we are on CNN nationally not just regionally. We are on MSNBC nationally, etc. "So it has been very good for us, drawing extremely well so it has given us access to markets beyond the traditional gateways of New York and Philadelphia and Boston and so on," she explained.

Walkine said people in the Midwest and the west coast of the United States are seeing The Bahamas' commercials and responding to them.

Questioned as to whether any new commercials will be rolled out in the future, the tourism official said: "We will look to roll out some new spots. I can't tell you yet if that means we are going to do a new shoot or if we are going to re-edit some existing footage because we do have some great footage now, but it will probably be the latter because it is more cost effective for us to just edit existing footage."

She added that promotions linked to companion-free airfare would continue, since they have been so well-received.

"We will be talking soon about what opportunities exist for us to look at some other promotions going into the fall. Whether it is the companion-free airfare or fly free, where everybody booking a certain number of nights in a hotel might fly free. We are not sure yet because there are some cost implications to that so it is something we have to explore, but we know we are committed to reducing the cost of access to this country for visitors," Walkine said.

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