Summary Report BVI Tourist Board
dda 2009 Q1 Market Insight
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Summary Report BVI Tourist Board
Opportunities for 2009 – Areas For Consideration “ We may be panicking about our mortgage, trading down at restaurants and fighting over our fuel bills but, however tough things get, we still wont give up our annual holiday.’ •Mail on Sunday, January 2009 With Europe still in economic downturn, it is now a buyers’ market when it comes to travel with clients trying to squeeze every ounce of value out of each travel experience.The trade are reporting a better than expected start to 2009 with long-haul travel selling extremely well. It’s likely that consumers are taking the strength of the euro as an opportunity to visit places in non-euro zones destinations they might not have considered or have only dreamed of experiencing before. Plus the competitive air prices that many of the big air carriers are offering such as Virgin Atlantic who has slashed the coast of its business class fares and so started a price war to boost load factors. Upmarket operator Abercrombie & Kent is opening premises within the Harrods department store in London next February. Known as ‘Abercrombie & Kent Private Travel at Harrods’, the team will offer an ‘exclusive and ultra-bespoke’ service for luxury travellers which will include the booking of private villas, resorts and access to private jets and yachts. In addition the new target audience is the over-65s who are the most determined to prioritise holidays in 2009, with 27% of this age group putting holiday spend first and only 15% focused on unsecured debt repayment. Yet again the wedding market is key for us to target in 2009 – with the number travelling abroad to get married is continuing to increase due to cheaper costs of holding a wedding abroad. One in six British weddings are now taking place overseas with research showing the market valued at £333m this year and forecast to reach £427m by 2013.
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Summary Report BVI Tourist Board
COMPETITORS Bahamas – Launched a poster campaign in February with partners such as VS and BA. UK office has a budget of £1million. St.Lucia - The St Lucia Tourist Board's funding for this year has
been doubled to $50 million, up from $25 million last year. A three-year "roadmap for national development" was unveiled at this week’s Caribbean Marketplace, organised by the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association. A new logo, combining the iconic shape of the Pitons with the yellow and blue of the country’s flag, was revealed. Improvements to infrastructure will include the upgrading of both airports on the island and the addition of further helipads. A bypass will be built to ease traffic around the capital Castries. Royal Caribbean International has just signed a deal to contribute half the funding for a new wharf, slated for completion by 2010. Allen Chastanet, minister for tourism and civil aviation, admitted it was unlikely all development would be completed within three years, but said a clear and cohesive strategy was vital for the island. A "village tourism" concept was also launched, described by Chastanet as “shifting the focus from a national to a local level”. Villages across the island will see their waterfronts and town centre’s developed. Eight regional "brands", such as the Tribal Coast and Urban South, have been devised to differentiate key areas of St Lucia.
TOUR OPERATOR Virgin Holidays – Virgin Holidays says its Caribbean sales have started the year strongly, despite economic fears. "Bookings were up for the first 15 days of January compared with last year, so there is a market out there," said purchasing director John Taker at the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association Marketplace. However, he confirmed that the booking profile had shifted: "The lead-in time has come down on average by about a month for the Caribbean. There's a definite trend towards people booking later."
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Summary Report BVI Tourist Board
ITLM CONFERENCE Those with effective business models will be the strongest. There will be a lot of casualties and those who survive will be those who adapt.� In terms of travel, we will continue to see much later booking patterns through 2009.The luxury travel business had been growing at a rate of 10% for the past four or five years due to the ease of credit available to aspirational consumers; the highbonus culture; the boom in the property market and the doubling of high net-worth individual.Delegates vowed to continue marketing their way through the recession, with 77% saying they would increase, or maintain their marketing spend at the same levels for 2009, albeit with a higher focus on electronic channels.
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