Minister Furbert On Tourism Figures/Marketing
Minister of Business Development and Tourism Wayne Furbert hosted a media briefing today [Aug 24] to provide an update on the latest tourism figures.
“As we all know, in today’s fragile global economy, even the most high-end destinations must provide a perception to the traveler that they are getting value for their hard-earned money. I am happy to say that we are achieving this goal,” said the Minister.
“While we are heartened by the visitor perception of Bermuda, we know we have to continue to grow the number of visitors coming here in this increasingly competitive marketplace. Our team is working hard to do just that and I will share with you now, if I may, a glimpse into some of the highlights of our efforts.”
Minister Furbert’s full statement follows below:
I am pleased to now be able to share some of the highly targeted and aggressive activities that have taken place during the Second Quarter of 2012 to promote our island’s tourism product.
Our talented tourism team, both on island and overseas, continues to work night and day to engage influencers among consumers, the trade, and the media in order to showcase Bermuda as a must-visit destination.
Before I talk about what we have done to promote the destination, let me first report that the destination is doing a fantastic job in promoting itself in the best way possible – and that is to both satisfy, as well as exceed, the expectations of our guests. This fact is clearly evident in the results of our airport exit surveys conducted during the period covering April through June, 2012.
Our survey showed the percentage of consumers who said they were completely satisfied with their experience grew over the previous quarter in key areas such as our natural scenic environment, feeling of personal safety, and, most importantly, the hospitality of the Bermudian people.
I am happy to report the percentage in which our island exceeded the expectations of leisure visitors also grew across the board in the areas of our friendly and hospitable people (a 14% increase), beauty of the island (an 8% increase), clean beaches and ocean (a 9% increase), and overall cleanliness of the island (a 9% increase).
Visitors opinions with respect to the value of their Bermuda trip, compared with the cost, has also improved. This is extremely important.
As we all know, in today’s fragile global economy, even the most high-end destinations must provide a perception to the traveler that they are getting value for their hard-earned money. I am happy to say that we are achieving this goal.
While we are heartened by the visitor perception of Bermuda, we know we have to continue to grow the number of visitors coming here in this increasingly competitive marketplace. Our team is working hard to do just that and I will share with you now, if I may, a glimpse into some of the highlights of our efforts.
First, our overseas sales team in North America is extremely active in the marketplace. During the Second Quarter the team to Bermuda’s message directly to consumers, travel agents and the media during a high-profile, multi-city tour.
The effort kicked off in Boston in conjunction with many of our medium-sized hotel properties. While there, the team engaged in sales calls and held a reception for trade in which various aspects of our island’s tourism product were presented. The event was attended by partners such as Cambridge Beaches, The Reefs, Rosedon and Newstead Belmont Hills, and provided a great opportunity to sell our island to this key geographic market.
In addition, we hosted our annual Bermuda Night at Fenway Park where I had the extreme honour of being invited by the Red Sox to open the game by singing America’s National Anthem. Thankfully I was joined by two very talented local singers Tricray Astwood and Steve Easton who helped me render the song.
More importantly, however, was the fact that the game provided the opportunity to engage the high-end customers who utilize the stadium’s luxury suites — each of which had a strong Bermuda sales presence. Our relationship with The Red Sox continues to keep Bermuda on a very high profile in this crucial New England market.
In addition to Boston, our sales blitz hit key markets in the Northeast such as Toronto, Washington, DC, Philadelphia and, of course, New York. We had the opportunity to not only engage key consumer and trade influencers, but also to engage in some PR and meet with top regional journalists to provide them with story ideas and opportunities to experience the island first-hand.
Overall, our PR efforts in North America produced tremendous results, with stories valued at more than $10 million in The Boston Globe, Washington Post, Toronto Sun, Globe & Mail and Travel + Leisure Magazine to name just a few. Our most high profile success, of course, came in the form of two hours worth of prime-time network coverage on ABC-TV’s “The Bachelorette”.
The show reached millions of viewers as well as coverage in media outlets such as CNN and People magazine. We leveraged the popularity of the show through social marketing and a contest that reached more than 3 million consumers, generated 11,830 new Bermuda Facebook fans, and achieved more than 22 million advertising impressions
While The Bachelorette brought us into the homes of American viewers, our sales team works hard to be top-of-mind on a face-to-face basis with our key customers.
Thus far in 2012, the team has engaged in more than 770 sales calls amongst the trade, planners of meetings and events, as well as niche groups.Our sales team was also very aggressive in attending more than 25 key industry trade shows and exhibitions that allowed us to sell Bermuda to a very targeted audience of active travelers and travel agents. In total, the team was able to engage with more than 10,000 potential travelers at these events.
Outreach to the lucrative groups and incentive market continues to be a priority as well.
I am happy to share that Bermuda’s outstanding work in this realm has led to our island once again being honored by the two leading U.S. trade publications – Successful Meetings and Meetings & Conventions magazines which awarded us with their Pinnacle and Gold Key awards respectively. This demonstrates to the world that our island is a premier location for meeting and incentive groups and we should be proud to know that we are considered among the world’s very best.
As you know, our sales efforts in North America include Canada as well where we recently participated in Toronto’s most exciting new business exchange. This vibrant and forward-thinking forum brought global Canadian planners and suppliers together, giving us the opportunity to be in front of over 1,000 buyers during the two- day show.
We were also very active in ensuring Bermuda had a high-profile presence at key trade shows in Canada and our team met one-on-one with more than 200 top travel agents and nearly 100 group prospects during the three-month period.
Across the pond, as they say, in Europe, our team continues to aggressively promote Bermuda as we seek to grow our visitation in our core U.K. market, as well as markets where we continue to see opportunity for growth, such as Italy.
First, in the U.K. our agency team there has secured tremendous media coverage for the destination in influential outlets such as The Independent and Sunday Telegraph, as well as niche outlets covering dive, weddings, golf and more. The team hosted two group press trips, working in partnership with British Airways, and set up nearly 70 meetings with journalists.
Special trade and media events were held attracting highly influential leaders and special golf and culinary promotions were visible to more than 65,000 consumers. All told the UK PR efforts produced coverage valued at more than 6.6 million pounds.
On the sales and marketing side, the UK Team supported our Compliments of Bermuda offer with advertorials in targeted outlets, and also continued with our eye catching bus and taxi wrapping which transformed these transportation modes to extremely eye-catching Bermuda pink – all the while promoting our proximity and beauty.
In Italy, we continue to raise consumer awareness and drive business through a multi-tactical approach that targets, families, honeymooners, and golfers. Like our efforts in North America and the U.K., we are also outreaching to the group and incentive market, travel trade and business travellers in Italy. We are hosting FAM trips, attending key industry trade shows, staging consumer events and actively outreaching to the media.
As Italy is still a growing destination for Bermuda, our team is also working hard to better familiarize travel agents and tour operator with our product through training sessions and webinars, while also creating co-op advertising programs with these groups.
Speaking of advertising, as you are aware, earlier this year we retained Fuseideas to be our agency of record in North America. They have helped us to create an amazing re-launch of our brand this month, however, there was a tremendous amount of work done even prior to the re-launch to prepare the campaign.
This included achieving a deeper understanding of the Bermuda visitor than ever before by conducting in-depth analysis based on 6 years of immigration card data, and a total of 1.3 million records. From this, Bermuda’s top target segments were defined confirming that our visitors are among the top most-affluent, most-well educated and top tier lifestyle segments in the U.S.
In addition to the new campaign planning, however, our advertising helped promote our Sizzling Summer offer in the U,S, and Canada, and then shifting to launch and support our Endless Summer programme. This advertising drove overall May site visits and page views on our website, GoToBermuda.com to increase by 113% and 156% versus May of 2011, and up 46% and 106% in June versus June 2011
Advertising activity highlights for the 2nd Quarter also include more than a dozen insertions in national or regional editions of major newspapers and magazines; more than 150 million impressions achieved through digital online advertising geo-targeted top-priority East-Coast Markets; television advertising in New York, Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Charlotte and Miami; ongoing radio advertising with the CBS radio network; highly visible out-of-home billboards and vehicle wraps, multiple email broadcasts reaching more than 1 million consumers, plus ongoing Search Engine Marketing.
I’m happy to say that record-breaking increases were achieved in the ever-important social marketing world , with the total number of engagements and fans on Facebook being increased by more than four times the levels of the previous quarter.
As mentioned earlier though, all the advertising, sales and marketing in the world is not going to help if we don’t provide a great product. Giving visitors something to see and do while they are here certainly provides a reason to come and our on-island team continues to help create, host and promote engaging events for our audience.
The high-profile Newport – Bermuda Race, in which more than 3,000 visitors helped pump more than $4 million into our national economy, leading to sold-out hotels and guest houses for the week is an excellent example.
Bermuda deserves so much more!
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- Bermuda Tourism Arrivals Decline By 1.4% | Bernews.com | August 24, 2012
Not a very good start to implementing that nice new ‘Tourism Plan’, is it. I thought they planned to quadruple Tourism earnings. They obviously won’t get there with reducing tourist numbers.
Of course, Wayne says he is ‘happy’ with these results. He’s trying to work out how to spin this abject failure into a positive, with an election looming.
My word – hats off and so many thanks to the talented tourism team for a fantastic job, working day and night and producing tremendous results that exceed all expectations. This clearly illustrates remarkable vision, value for money promotions, understanding a competitive marketplace, meeting client expectations and genuine engagement with millions and millions of high end clients. I am especially happy to know that we are achieving our goal of, um um, less tourists.
Come on guys, the plan was launched AFTER the period in the latest stats.
I’m going to give the Tourism Board, and the Minister, the benefit of the doubt for now. Next year is when we will hopefully see visitor numbers rise as a result of the plan.
NEXT YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I see. After the election.
You lot never learn, do you.
Well considering the cruise ships have cut their numbers for next year I’m going to say its a safe bet the numbers will be down next year…price of platinum jeeps falling.
Dreamer!
Batman, I know where the Joker is …
aaahahahaha!
It is amazing it is over 14yrs since these bunch of jokers and disgustingly highly paid and are still in power of all the damage they have done to once a well sustained econ.Now you know how race issue is killing black people to put an inefficient govt at the expense of their only home BERMUDA,their livlihood,their childrens’future …just too much to analyse that..THIS IS LIKE island wide suicidide.
Are we there yet ?
Was Wayne Furbert in charge of the UBP when they made their pronouncement that Bermuda didnt need Tourism and was only focussed on International Business………..this sounds like a wahoo shouting “kill the wahoos” and then realising he has condemned himself.
Always funny to see people have to eat their words….. Wayne Furbert and Maxwell Burgess for Premier and Deputy Party Leader I say!
There was a hole in the bucket.
Anyone got a bucket?
Crabs in a bucket?
The police have one, they took it from Smiths.
High end destinations must offer value for money.
Rates at The Pink Beach Club start at $460 per night. But once you add in all taxes, a $72 per day service charge and a resort levy it’s upward of $700 per night. And it’s 3 star quality.
The above example highlights why it might be a struggle to convince people to come. The same standard elsewhere for less than a quarter of the cost.
Maybe at the next big tourism launch we could show our east coast visitors a British side of Bermuda. Many things can be done to attract visitors to a British Colony. It seems that sun, sea, sand, gombeys, and west Indian accents dosn’t work anymore.
Cleancut, you’re sleeping, you’re sleepig cleancut, wake up cleancut, wake up cleancut you’re sleeping, ah! Have a drink, you sleep too much. Lol
Yes! I guess it would be hard for some to swallow their pride,
But at least we will all have jobs, and money in our pockets.
Never happen. Not under a PLP Government. It is all about what makes their voters happy, not what the customer wants. Sorry, the customer does not give a ship about gombeys, diaspora trails or local culture other than they do like the percieved Britishness of Bermuds, what little of that which has niot been destroyed.
A tough pill to swallow, but if there is to be any hope of tourism to return the customer has to be put first & given what they want.
A capture of the fort in Dockyard with a good sequence on the Crown Jewels located in the fort would have way exceeded interest than a few gombeys dancing around someones dinner table. 99.9 per cent of our visitors do not know what a gombey is, or even get to see a Gombey, just ask them!
This country is just to boring for tourist to come here any more and i don’t blame them. Where can they go to let LOOSE!!!! and i mean let LOOSE!!!.
No where..all nice homes for the local and the rest are all restricted to the tourists might they get mugged,killed and treated with disrespect..
Listen. There is a HUGE difference between being High End and High Priced!
High End = Value For Money, you don’t mind paying for exceptional product/service
High Priced = Pay exuberant money for something you could have gotten else where for a fraction of the cost
Bermuda has NOTHING UNIQUE to offer ANYBODY besides the PRICE of BUSINESS!!!
So change ya mind set of how things are done/provided for/catered to etc here and then the tourists will come.
It is the Global economy, it is the global economy. Always blaming somebody else. Don’t they ever get tired of it?
I have just returned from a 12,000 mile US road trip. Everywhere we went tourism is up. Attractions were busy. Restaurants were busy, even mid week. Service providers were efficient & happy to have the business.
The problem is not the global economy or the US economy. The problem is Bermudas attitude towards tourism & lack of value for money.
Must say that the return through immigration & customs a few days ago was a very pleasant change.
here it is racism well and alive and the only ppl are suffering are the BLACKS..and they are quite happy with it..their chilfren are running the family narcobusiness,some criminals are being sent off to ‘old mother england’ to get FREE room,education and money’not bad!,a health production of ‘feral youths are in order and the blacks rather cut their noses to spite their faces putting a black govt gives a sense of ‘security and euphoric feeling of getting even with the ‘white man’ so dont everything is “IRIE”
My opinion is that we need to focus on the right Tourist! in the 1980′s we have exclusivity and a unique product that lured high end tourist and big spenders. Today we have changed focus to middle class and cruiship passengers who for the most part dont spend a dime in the island and got a $300 deal on the cruise in the first place. Additionally our hotel product used to be superior. Outside of the Reefs and Cambridge Beaches all other hotels have become require! And don’t forget the people!! We have also changed and when we were told that International Business is all we need our focus and attitudes changed! Kids returned from college with business degrees not hospitality degrees!!
Oh and don’t get me started on those new ads!!! Very staged and fake!! They do not capture Bermuda at all……
I want the old Bermuda back!!!
We do not have a product anymore. Period!
Yes we do, its just needs to be marketed in the right way. Seems like Wayne and his new board couldn’t sell toilet paper to someone taking a sh!t.
Prices too high; poor value for money; too much traffic; extremely inefficient public transport; poor service at all levels; rude, arrogant people; a concrete jungle/urban sprawl; noise everywhere; dangerous driving on the roads IF you’re silly enough to rent a bike; high crime rate including crimes against visitors; etc…etc…
If you call that a product, you need a correction to come indeed!
Tourism Board, Authority or whatever else name we want to call it needed. Of course the will always be a minister, however the difference is they concentrate on the real issues affecting the industry and leave the spin and worrying about winning elections ect to the politician. Of course the body once appointed should be free of the usual political shinanigans which seems to have crept into everything, and allowed to put mind,body and soul to the task at hand. This is too important an issue to be left to the whims and fancy of petty politics, spin, number juggling ect.
Wayne, you are, and you will always be wrong about your bias approach to tourism. Do you think the world lives in your circle? because l will tell you, those latest ads showing everyone your true color has only marginally diminished your reputation to your peers, however your walking accross the aisle, well, thats what really did it for you…..see you at the next election loser wanna be singer/producer
Okay, so if we’re so pumped up about tourism, WHY? did they build slums and a massive gas station on prime tourist related property in Warwick. What should be our “Gold Coast”, is now a tribute to our former Jamerican Premier.
well to answer…’slums’=morevotes for this inept govt
‘massive gass station’=shows the mafia is alive in these islands and some people..got a BIG$$ to retire on..
this flybynight govt will sell even our pink sand for a quick buck before they leave us BONE DRY!!
This Island needs new blood in power to make some seriously needed changes in all areas…especially tourism. Who would want to come to this boring place. I deal with it because it’s my home, but who would want to pay x amount to come and do what? We don’t offer anything different from the other Islands. Certain people make it very clear that foreigners are not welcome. Public transportation sucks! Many establishments lack good customer service. We are very lucky and should be grateful that people still want to come here. There’s nothing ‘special’ about Bermuda. Yes we have pink sand and lots of beaches, but what else? Really, what else do we have to entice tourists to come here??
Beaches are amazing, the weather is great, the oceans are as blue as the sky. No denying this. But all of the above is the same in Mexico, the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean for a fraction of the cost and non teeth sucking service. In this economy, vacationers arent stupid. They are doing their homework and follow up on current events. I mean one of the main writiers for another media just spent an entire article bashing Americans for asking stupid questions when they arrive here. Biting the hand that feeds you in the worst possible way.
What I would like to know from Wayne Furbert: “Is this your UBP vision of tourism when you were bashing the former Minister of Tourism, or have you now had a new revelation since crossing the floor?” It is a little fishy to me especially when you have assigned your once close UBP colleague Maxwell Burgess to head up the tourism board. In your TV interview there were intelligent people listening and all the three of you were doing is winging it and playing to the audience. What is the real deal, not all of us have our eyes and ears close.
If I was going to vote PLP, you two former UBP stalwarts have made me rethink my position…OBA you got my vote at least for now you are transparent. And yes I have voted several times for the PLP previously, but will not with the way things are going. Everybody is just abiding their time to get two thirds of their current salary(dont worry about the masses lets just serve long enough to get ours).
We seem to be operating on the “spoil system” putting all our loyalist on this committee and that committee. This is why a lot of folk are voting they way they are voting so they can be on these committees with no substantial qualifications to warrant their appointment or they are hoping to get a JP(which now is like getting a toy out of a box of cracker jacks).
WHEN WILL BERMUDA GET A CAPTAIN AND CREW THAT CAN TURN BERMUDA AROUND.
Some data to chew on: Most is from 2011 but I am sure reflective of current trends.
Visitor Arrivals to the Turks & Caicos Islands in 2011 showed an increase of 12.3% where the vast majority were contributed by the Cruise Arrivals. The month of December saw a growth of 23% in stay-over visitor arrivals. The overall total arrivals for the past year was 1,009,720 arrivals. This draws on both cruise arrivals and land base arrivals to the country. When broken down separately, cruise arrivals accounted for 655,497 a 6% increase in numbers and land base arrivals accounted for some 354, 223 a 26% increase in the numbers totaling in the aforementioned surpassed 1 million mark.
So far 93,822 people have flown into Cayman, an increase of 5,981 this year for all over the world. The majority of visitors still come from the United States with some 73,383 passengers boarding flights there, according to survey results. *2011 results*
Visitor arrivals in Jamaica totaled 3.07 million in 2011, an 8.4 percent increase over 2010 figures and an all-time record for the Caribbean nation, according to the December 2011 Monthly Statistical Report published by the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB).
The final numbers wont be in until next month, but if airport arrivals are any indication, they will show 2011 to be a growth year in visitors to Cancun. Airport officials recently reported that Cancun Airport received its 13 millionth passenger of the year on Dec. 31.That figure makes 2011 the best year in the airports history, with the most passengers ever. Cancuns airport serves the eastern Yucatan in the state of Quintana Roo, including the fast-growing Riviera Maya and Tulum resort areas south of the airport as well as Cancun north of the airport.
So, still think that 1% drop is insignificant? Despite a harsh economy, 4 of Bermuda’s rivals are reporting record numbers of visitors. Still not concernd about tourism? If you dont beleive me just do a google search of the above. We could probably go on all day with this.
Product product product. Yes, we need new hotels, and yes we need better service. I was in a busy restaurant at Dockyard this week with tourists. The hostess managed to greet us, take us to a table, toss menus around, and leave without uttering a word. Lunch was $150 for 5.
But the real problem now is transportation. There simply isn’t any. Tourists will no longer use taxis for all their transport needs, and buses are pretty useless -unless you really plan, and eat early. Without fixing transport, there will be no more tourists. I live around tourists and tlak with them. This is becoming their no.1 issue. We need change here, and it wont come from the industry. For 60 years we have left this up to taxi divers. It is now time to take over our transport needs and make changes.
As a Bermudian I would venture that few -if any- of us would holiday in a place where each time we wanted to go out (a store, a beach, dinner, golf) we had to wait in a queue for a taxi and pay the additional ($30-$60) for the transport. Wouldn’t happen!
wayne u should have waited until you became PLP leader before rolling out Maxwell & Co
now everybody knows what your true intentions are
keeping the MP salary
helping out your former UBP cronies who, like you, havenhit hard times financially
Good work Razor we need to copy the TCI model on property development I am here right now and having a blast. The interesting thing about the air arrivals here is the large number of Canadians that vist and also buy property?
I recently took a cruise from Bermuda and sadly after talking to a lot of the guest 70% said they would not return,here are some of the comments.
Long lines and not organized to get on tender.
When the tender docks in Hamilton everyone crosses the road where there is no pedestrian several times cars had to apply breaks to avoid accidents.
Shouting at tourist at the Ferry Terminal,rude people at ferry terminal.
Rude bus drivers.
So much bad language in public places one incident they rented Jet Ski’S and young kids calling out sexual remarks and bad language and the guide never tried to stop it,
Every bench had a vagrant on it in Hamilton.
So many people begging for money in Hamilton.
Surprised how dirty Hamilton is.
Walking off of the early morning down by BUUI “TEN” lights out in the center of the road making it dark and not safe.
One person asked who reviewed the new add’s? to have grammer errors is poor girl’s s/b girls” all that money to have this shown around the world.
Come on Bermuda when a bus driver is rude and we want to suspend him/her the union calls for a strike really,if you are in the service industry and you are rude….loss of job…
There is no excuse for thisI recently rode the bus from Dockyard to Hamilton the the driver the whole way never never spoke to or acknowledged one passenger when the boarded or left the bus.He drove
the whole way with one arm on the money machine.
Do we really want visitors here with this behaviour ?
perplexed….
Great points Kathy. I think I’ve seen that bus driver.
…..and they know and fully understand one thing. They will NEVER get fired!
We continue to reward bad behaviour…..
Wayne, is trying very hard to bring in the tourist…. but when they get here they are subject to bathrooms that are not functional….and the service is piss poor…
who in their right mind would want to come to this third world country ?
@ Kathy Rowntree,
Ditto.
Re the Bus driver; thats what happens when you employ Koolaide people.
Do you know how much these guys and gals make an hour and insurance coverage?
One day they will loose their seat.
Literally.
Interesting that the numbers proudly announced are merely the increase over the last quarter results without mention of what those results actually were, i.e. how many passengers were surveyed and how many of those were completely satisfied. For demonstration, if the original survey was 1,000 passengers and only 100 of them (10% total) purported to be ‘completely satisfied’ (again notice the lack of this statistic in the good ministers speech), for this to increase by a whopping 25% over the last result you would need 125 tourists in 1,000 to be completely satisfied (12.5% total – that’s right, 25% of the original 100 but only 2.5% overall). Kind of misleading if we don’t have the numbers to benchmark the increases against, right? So was it the numbers which increased or, as I read it, the percentage which grew……….very different things.