Videos: National Tourism Master Plan Released
Last night [June 11] a Town Hall meeting was held at the Berkeley Institute to discuss the National Tourism Plan, which was developed during the past five months through collaboration between Tourism & Leisure Europraxis and local partners OBM International with the Tourism Board and Bermuda Department of Tourism.
The ambitious plan calls for visitor expenditures to grow from $422MM in 2011 to $1,471MM in 2022, and direct job positions supported by the Tourism Industry to increase from 3,600 in 2011 [9% of job pool] to 6,157 by 2022 [15% of job pool].
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According to the Plan, the top strengths which need to be leveraged are our historical legacy as high-end destination, unique cultural and natural resources with international appeal, distinctive tourism hubs, high end market appeal, strong cruise market arrivals and yachters with high potential, business reputation, developing products for business tourists, high repetition rate, successful collaborations and PPP, close proximity to major key source markets and passionate people.
Tourism Board Chairman Maxwell Burgess speaking after the Town Hall:
The Plan said that Bermuda has “five distinct tourism hubs” which it named as: St. George World Heritage Destination & St. David’s Island, Hamilton City, South Shore area, Royal Naval Dockyard and Offshore Bermuda.
The evening was started with a video presentation of the locally produced song Proud to Be Bermudian. Presenting the plan from Tourism & Leisure Europraxis were project leader Nanita Ferrone and Paloma Zapata. They were joined for the Q&A portion by Tourism Board chairman Maxwell Burgess, Tourism Board deputy chairman Senator Vince Ingham, Denaye Hinds and Colin Campbell.
20 minutes of the Q&A portion of the Town Hall:
Those in attendance included Premier Paula Cox, Tourism Minister Wayne Furbert, Transport Minister Walter Roban, Minister of Government Estates and Information Services Michael Scott, Senator Jonathan Smith, Dale Butler and Director of Tourism William Griffith.
40 minutes of the Q&A portion of the Town Hall:
Also present were Patricia Pamplin-Gordon and Shawn Crockwell of the OBA, St. George’s Mayor Kenneth Bascome, Hamilton Deputy Mayor Donal Smith, Troy Symonds, President of the Bermuda Trade Union Congress Shine Hayward, Unified Resorts Ltd President Theodore Adams, hotel representatives and others.
The full 47-page report [PDF here] is below, click the bottom right icon for fullscreen:
Better hope this works with 19 more job losses announced today….
Great presentation, in spite of the fact that some photos were clearly not of Bermuda, or the fact that numbers and bar charts were pulled out of thin air, or the fact that the presentation was outsourced to Spain. Also, let’s not even bother putting a price tag on this ambitious project! Otherwise, great job… Now make it happen!
And if you could just turn that lump of lead into gold while you’re at it ….
Can we just close Front St and make it for bicycles and pedestrians only already? The best views in all of Hamilton you can see while parking your car. That space should be used for water front clubs and restaurants. Also while we are at it since it’s not 1920 anymore and we have trucks to move containers can we move the docks at the same time? I feel this would create a welcoming entrance into Hamilton.
2022? whats up with the bs projections when the PLP probably won’t be in power anyways then….its all a waste of taxpayer money as the next Government whether it be PLP or OBA will surely trash all this and find more excuses to spend money
Why shouldn’t they still be in then ? We are still waiting on promises from 1998 yet to be fulfilled that mysteriously always seem to hinge on them getting back in at the next election .
A shame more people can’t see it though .
We just need to be patient and give the PLP a chance. I’m sure they will succeed at this initiative since they have succeeded at everything else they’ve attempted. Come join the flock of sheep and vote PLP!
This is unbelievable to me. Are you telling me that this is the “Master Plan” for Tourism in Bermuda? What a laugh! What untapped resources can be “polished” in St Davids to attract more tourists to the East End area? What exactly?
This excerpt is laughable:
“The top strengths which need to be leveraged are our historical legacy as high-end destination, unique cultural and natural resources with international appeal, distinctive tourism hubs, high end market appeal, strong cruise market arrivals and yachters with high potential, business reputation, developing products for business tourists, high repetition rate, successful collaborations and PPP, close proximity to major key source markets and passionate people.
Lets face it, we are a high-PRICED destination, not a high-END destination! If Bermuda was a high-end destination we would not have the lack of customer service that is so apparent all over the island, including our so called high-PRICED hotels, restaurants, shops, transport, grocery stores, etc, which unfortunately we can not do anything about due to our being in the middle of a water “desert” called the Atlantic Ocean with NO viable natural resources to sustain ourselves other than the minimal farmland and loquat trees!
We do not have high-end market appeal period, and we do not have anymore money left to promote Bermuda as needed to garner that appeal, maybe it would be cheaper to promote us as a soon to be Third World country?
We are rapidly losing our business reputation day by day. Yes, we can argue that stats show businesses are still setting up here on the island, but how many of them are the size of ACE and XL that can actually hire en-masse? Most are small 5 -10 man operations that will never absorb the mass unemployment problem that is now growing and growing in Bermuda.
Bermuda is a has-been product that has now past the point of no-return. We failed to stay ahead of the curve like other destinations did, and continue to be lead by people who are not forward thinking and are living in the past with chips on their shoulders and are all to happy to “smash and grab” what they couldn’t get back then, to the detriment of the younger generation of this island. The 20th century has finally caught up to Bermuda and we are now caught on the back foot dealing with violence, crime and murder.
They say to use our imaginations and tourism can thrive once more! Well that is just the problem, i think most, if not all those in positions to make things happen in Bermuda, are doing just that, imagining things, because some of these ideas that they come up with are laughable and primary school at best! Why don’t we imagine that the Govt has money to make all of this happen? Public-Private partnerships? Another imaginary friend!
Who in their right mind is going to invest the type of money these bunch of dreamers are suggesting, with the LIMTED resources Bermuda has to offer and the clear cases of mismanagement of money by the PUBLIC sector, someone please tell me what PRIVATE sector companies or persons are going to be willing to invest money into a no return project?
Companies are leaving Bermuda, investors are backing out of Bermuda projects, not committing more money.
Well put! You are correct. We are NOT high end. We are high priced for second rate service.
Thank you for the plan. Wish i could be there. I am 100% in on Bermuda and Tourism.
I will take the time to read the plan, but right off:
I love the idea of the 5 hubs and hopefully via these niches,developing those areas to support Tourism.
Love the focus on cultural/Historical Bermuda, this is one of our main selling points and I dont think we have ever capitalized on it.
And i hope this plan incorporates Sports Tourism.
ok so we paid how much for a powerpoint presenation?
quick win will be gambling the rest will be ignored.
again we are tricked this time by the UBP in the form of Mr Furbert
IMO One of the best questions asked was by the man about training youth via the NTB early to work in Tourism as instill National PRIDE! I agree. Very essential.
It is up to US as Bermudians as a whole to instill in ourselevs, our families, especially our youth to invest in Tourism with education, career focus, and by being ambassadors for our island.
It seems we had it right once before so what were the circumstances then that allowed it?
Well first off the rest of the world made themselves a tourism destination.
They also treated their guests well enough to earn REPEAT visits (except Syria )
Their prices were and are reasonable.
Those few facts overpowered us because at some point we stopped doing those things.
It felt like Bermudians became too well off to continue ‘serving’ the needs of others,
unless of course they were Exempt Company ceos with mucho dinero to spend.
You can come up with all kinds of grand schemes and make bold predictions but if you want to face the truth it may be that we would be better to put the tourism budget of $30 million into bond funds for the next 10 years and at least have something at the end of it than the results we got from the last 13 years.
Its isn’t sunny enough here people, you can’t compete against year round destinations, when you’ve only got 6 months to play with. We should be focusing on the IB folks and providing sensible options for them. I can tell you now (using my own company as an example) that the number one alternative to the Hamilton Princess or Elbow is video conferencing – more and more people simply aren’t coming. We have clients due to come in July, but to give you an idea, Grotto Bay is almost $400 a night, Elbow is $700. Guess what, 5 people aren’t coming now. Forget high end yachters – I mean come on, we are 700 miles from land – what about the hordes of business travellers that aren’t coming? The Govt needs to understand that IB’s budgets are fractions of what they were, and the Bermuda trip is an obvious place to save. I’d estimate we are 30% down on US and UK visitors, which is probably 500 people – all spending maybe 4k, that’s $2m gone out of Bermuda’s economy right there.
Have they considered some of these factors?
1. World Economy, EURO is in trouble
2. Bermuda economy recovery, when does it recover?
3. US economy? still struggling
4. Getting new investors in tourism, NEW Money from outside
bottom line, you need the product to appeal to the market. You want a high end market, how are you going to blend that with bingo wing cruise tourism???? NOT GOING TO WORK!!! If I am a high end tourist, I don’t want to be anywhere near low end cruise passengers. Pick a target market and cater to that, this is more of the convoluted scatter gun approach. We are a small Island with small amounts of space and activities. Cater to quality not quantity and spend the money developing the product!! Can you imagine if we developed the waterside of Hamilton to cater to high end tourism with shops, bars and restaurants! Not only does it compliment business tourism it compliments high end tourists. But instead we spent money on a Pier in Dockyard.
All I see from this plan is pipe dreams and a lack of clear focus on paper.