BTA Urges Community To “Bring It Home”
The Bermuda Tourism Authority [BTA] launched a new call-to-action program which shows the public how to play a specific role in growing the island’s tourism economy.
The BTA said the “Bring It Home campaign, which focuses on the group travel segment, empowers people to use their personal or professional connections to bring meetings, conferences and events home for the local economy.”
“In Bermuda we are incredibly well-connected internationally so we see an opportunity to leverage those connections to positively impact the island’s economy,” said Glenn Jones, director of public and stakeholder relations for the BTA.
“A lot of Bermuda residents who belong to a professional association, a sports club or a church group travel overseas to convene with their counterparts around the world. We want to empower those folks to walk into their next meeting and say: ‘why not Bermuda? I know how to make it happen!’”
The BTA provides logistical support – via its business development managers in New York City – to anyone who takes up the call-to-action. The campaign is made up of a four-step online program that takes about 15 minutes to complete.
- Step 1: Watch an online video of less than five minutes which explains the impact of group travel to Bermuda’s economy.
- Step 2: Read a short information paper on the BTA’s strategy for capturing group travel.
- Step 3: Submit an online form that details the size, dates and needs of the Bring It Home business.
- Step 4: Bring It Home.
Also online, the BTA profiles the stories of people already successfully “bringing it home” for the local economy. Part of those profiles include the estimated economic impact each person generated for Bermuda’s economy.
Mr Jones said: “As you go through the four steps it is very clear group travel has an enormously positive impact on the local economy. So when we profile Bring It Home heroes we show everyone just how important these influencers are to our community. It’s huge.”
The first three Bring It Home heroes to be profiled are Stephen Caton [Bermuda Tattoo], Kappa Alpha Psi [Kappa Classic] and Todd Boren [Young/World Presidents Organisation].
To further incentivise new Bring It Home heroes, the BTA is working with the local tourism industry to develop special experiences and rewards for people who successfully bring new group travel to the island.
Additionally, BTA officials will provide proposals or presentations on group travel to any organisation that wants to explore bringing it home with a group travel event.
The Bring It Home campaign can be found here on the BTA’s website.
Right… the BTA/BDoT can’t improve our tourism numbers no matter how much of our money they squander, no matter how many “managers” they employ… now they’re asking US to do their job?! Seriously?
The BTA MANDATE was to increase visitor arrivals thru the AIRPORT. They have failed dismally at that. And more cruise ship passengers don’t count.
IMHO, it’s time for all of them to resign. Let’s start over again with people who know what they are doing. Let’s involve the local ad agencies, and a resort-experienced NY ad agency working with the local agencies.
These BTA lot are an embarrassment to the Island! TIME TO GOOOOO!!!
Surely you realise the BTA doesn’t create groups to put on meetings, sports tournaments, etc. They recruit and pitch to people and organisations that partake in group travel. This is really just extending BTA’s marketing outreach.
So actually this IS the BTA doing its job. This is the BTA chasing its mandate to grow the tourism economy.
I’m surprised someone named “street wise” isn’t smart enough to connect the dots on his/her own.
@street wise…applause
time to end ‘workfare’…
ending workfare? Wasn’t that what the Sage Commission suggested?
That’s what we are paying you and the Joker for, F!@#*** Bull*S!@#.
When we had 90% of Bermudians working in Hospitality, we had generational repeat visitors.
Now we’re paying him and the Joker over 500,000 between the both of them for an increase in tourist and all they can come up with is DUMB gimmicks.
F!@#*** Bull S!@# !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh shut up Onion Juice.
You talk crap.
Who blew up a hotel and did s***.
Lord.
In all due respect, if you are telling someone they talk crap,, what do you call that stuff you talk on here each day??? Please enlighten me, I am always looking for new words to add to my personal dictionary..
am hard pressed to disagree
I urge the bta to return all the funds that they’ve taken. Numbers down but their pay in up. Only in Bermuda does this happen. Smh
And the Corporation of Hamilton were “Bringing it Home” with their Black Mayors Conference.
To the haters who posted previously – this is simply a call for all Bermudians to do their small part also. Could it be that you feel you are entitled, and simply have to wait for the good times to come back with no effort put in on your part?
That is the problem with so many of the vocal minority.
Im kinda with you, but trying to figure out what the “Black Mayors Conference” got to do with the price of eggs.. You refer to thinking on the large scale, but then point on one particular endeavor?? Seems a bit odd, (Nice way of saying, it appears you are targeting the Black Mayors Conference). I guess you dropped your trump card on the floor by mistake..
But.. But.. But .. What am I missing here ? That’s exactly how the tourism business model actually started in Bermuda ! What are you expensive suits doing all day ?
Me thinks the BTA is deplete of Any original ideas !
Coffee, you are right
They do not have any ideas.They want everyone to do their job for them.
You can bet they will pay themselves another bonus for “Bring it home”
The BTA is just letting everyone know that they are willing and able to help organize the logistics of planning meetings and conferences in Bermuda. How is this causing such anger?
This isn’t meant to be the silver bullet that fixes tourism…BTA is doing a number of small initiatives in order to right the ship. You lot attack each BTA idea as being not enough do fix everything but they are working on loads of new ideas, which I for one find refreshing as Bermuda has had a lack of those in a while.
And are the arrivals numbers changing m? No so go figure.
@brigadooner – be kind and share these ‘refreshing’ ideas as i would like to be more complimentary instead of disappointed.
This initiative is nothing new. The Dept. of Tourism had incentives for residents who refer or bring their friends to Bermuda. They encouraged college students, for example, to bring their friends to Bermuda. They had incentives for residents who bring groups to Bermuda for sports, conferences and other events.
I suppose the BTA staff will reward themselves generously with another handsome, tax payer funded, bonus for resurrecting this ‘old’ idea and passing it off as their own.
You know how hanbury and his team are. Money hungry while We see less and less tourist.
To the guy who says that we Bermudians did this and did that where were these geniuses for the last 20 years
to answer simplistically, the world travel dynamics changed and the former ‘geniuses’ could no longer adapt. fast forward, we ditched those parasitic advertising arrangements that we had in the ‘Platinum’ years in the hope that when the new BTA was established, it would produce initiatives that were relevant, exciting and would result in more air tourists, more dollars spent by tourists (obviously not due to price changes but volume) and hopefully more repeat visitors. i guess we are still hoping and waiting for change…
Also the submission for the AC that was submitted with help of the BTA to entice the Cup to come to Bermuda, for me that alone more than justifies their bonuses… Look at the whole picture
Honestly it was more so Grant Gibbons and a few OBA members, not really the BTA. But in all honesty if you look at bonuses for someone like Hansbury around the world, other people get quadruple what he gets…
I think this is a great idea. I have seen it first hand with events like the Round The Sound Swimathon.
It must be really hard to hate this much…a lot of energy expended. If you used all this energy to help the situation, like BTA is suggesting, maybe things would get better.
Wow these blogs have a fast shelf life! By the time I get to many of the topics it’s old news.
Anyway Onion Juice has hit on to an important point. “When we had 90% of Bermudians working in Hospitality, we had generational repeat visitors”
OJ is right. We had more visitors when we had more Bermudians in the industry – giving our world renown Bermudian hospitality. This was never progressed and encouraged the way it should have been. We have lost that Bermudian feel and touch and with the increased influx of foreigners in the hospitality industry, this gets more lost.
Also so many foreigners in our hospitality are working and able to live on pennies whereas the average Bermudian cannot (not to mention the increased exploitation). We shot ourselves in the foot in many ways with that one by concentrating on IB and not tourism. All of these current ‘gimmicks’ should not be new ideas. That’s telling of how desperate BTA has become in playing catch up. Let’s get more to the heart of the matter than the superficial.