Chairman and CEO of the Grenada Tourism Authority Randall Dolland and Petra Roach recently undertook a sales mission to the UK, to meet with key airline and tour operator partners and reconfirmed Grenada’s commitment to the market.
“Against the backdrop of a historic cost of living crisis with surging fuel prices and a fall in the value of the UK pound, it was important for us to get face to face with our key partners in this very important market and do a temperature check. The reality is that there are several destinations vying for this business and we want to ensure that we get our fair share of the pie. Feedback from the tour operators is that there has not been a significant slowdown in business and there is cautious optimism that people will not forfeit their holiday plans in spite of the challenging economic landscape. That said, we cannot rest on our laurels, we have to ensure that we are out there pushing the unique attributes of Grenada and ensuring that we have some strong tactical offers in the marketplace,” said CEO Roach.
Paul Cleary, CEO of tour operator Caribtours stated, “Caribtours has long been a supporter of Grenada and in the last 12 months especially we have really seen our business grow. Our sales for 2022 are already 50% up on 2019 and growing. With our purchase of the Grenada specialist group ‘Just Grenada’ earlier in the year, we now feature a far wider range of hotel products than ever before. These last 12-18 months have seen real energy and momentum around Grenada and this bodes well for the future.”
Route performance and growth strategies were also discussed with senior executives of Virgin Atlantic and British Airways who both offer direct service to the Maurice Bishop International Airport. British Airways Holidays and Virgin Atlantic Holidays — the in-house tour operator arms, both reported significant growth in their programmes with BAH advising that Grenada was outpacing the market in terms of performance with an increase of 37% and as such they were expanding the portfolio of products in their programme.
Chairman Dolland said, “It was important for us to have these face-to-face meetings with our key travel partners to ensure Grenada remains top of mind during this transitional period in the UK. We want to ensure that our key initiatives are collaborative and relevant and that we continuously engage in strategic discussions for future growth planning. The UK visitors to Grenada represents 22% of overall visitor arrivals and has the longest length of stay at 12 days with a high level of repeat visitation. They are also one of the highest spenders and they like to explore the island, so the GTA recognises the value of investing in this market.”
He continued, “The priority is to solidify Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique as THE destination of choice for visitors looking for a sustainable, safe and community-oriented holiday experience and we can’t do that on our own — it has to be in tandem with our partners.”
GTA’s sales missions have been part of an ongoing strategy to ensure that Grenada remains top of mind with key partners and also continuously identify growth areas for the destination based on empirical data and feedback from industry partners.
GTA
