CEO of Discover Dominica Authority Collin Piper has said that a total of 2,606 visitors came to the island in 2012 for the 16th edition of the World Creole Music Festival (WCMF).
Speaking at the media launch of the festival on Monday evening, Piper described the festival as an economic success.
He pointed out that most visitors to the island came from Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Martin, St Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda.
It was revealed that a total of $2.5 million were spent by visitors during the event.
“As we embark on our journey to welcome 90,000 visitors to our shores by 2015, we recognize that festival tourism plays a major role so we continue to use culture and the many attributes of Dominica that will result in creating unique experiences for our visitors,” he pointed out.
He impressed on the businesses to partner with the WCMF to show their corporate citizenship and sponsor the festival in cash or kind in order to sustain it and encouraged the private sector to ensure that there is enough for the visitors to do while they are on island.
Meanwhile, minister for Tourism and Legal Affairs Ian Douglas, pointed out that the festival highlights culture, creative dynamism and will be incorporated into Dominica’s independence celebrations.
“This year we want to enforce the World Creole Music Festival as part of Dominica’s 35th Independence Celebrations,” he stated. “The festival is a major part of our efforts to use our culture and the arts to stimulate the tourism sector. The event was conceived as a means of increasing visitor arrivals during the early parts of the official tourism season and to create greater linkages between tourism sector and culture.”
He added that the festival can be used to draw visitors to experience the dynamic tourism product that is offered here. Douglas stated that the event has stirred much interest in Dominica and noted that this year promises to be better.
He also indicated that organizers of the event must find a creative way to market and sell the creole period in Dominica since it is a perfect time to welcome visitors and celebrate the island’s creole culture.
Who is doing the sound, roof lighting and stageing this year, my guess is from outside as always, as to what make them think that is the best solution they need to wise up.
I suggest that this festival aline itself or collabrate with World OF Music And Dance WOMAD
http://womad.org/festivals/
Piper you are only singing for your supper.How come every year WCMF is always at a lost in the hundreads of thousand of dollars answer me that.
No respect at all for the gentleman where all that respect gone to is it just because we are failing to respect our own Dominican I find who ever it is just could tell who
Nothing to shout about Piper. You shouldn’t have even talk about this in public. Are you trying to tell us a World Class event only attracts 2,600 people from 4 countries in the caribbean. Dominica realise this. NO ACCESS; NO BUSINESS. With direct international flights I bet those numbers could be multiplied by at least 10. People would be able to fly-in for the weekend then back to their destinations for work on the Monday. Mr. Piper I can see you’re in pain when you know better can be done if this Govt, improve access to our country. You have travelled and you know about international movement, and I am sure you don’t act like a country bookie like our ministers. For them it’s about where they have visited, what hotel they stayed at, what food they ate, rather than looking at their surroundings and making observations. Man I vex. Allu up our country
He must have meant 26,000 visitors, not 2,600. If not then we should all be embarassed.
Piper pa honte to say that nonsense? 2600 hundred visitors? Sa ki sa?
“He pointed out that most visitors to the island came from Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Martin, St Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda.”
Piper, you are nothing more than a joke; you are clapping yourself on your shoulders, hoping you will get people excited over the nonsense you are talking.
Your intelligence should dictate to you that if the source of the visitors who came derived from the islands stated in the quote above, they seem not to be foreign visitors as such, however, our very own native living on the islands mentioned who returned home to visit.
In the first place we have approximately six (600) so called Hotel Rooms in Dominica, not enough to accommodate two thousand, six hundred-two people. So, here is your proof that you could well count them as RR; (residence returning), who visited with their family and friends.
You can prove that by finding out if the six hundred hotel rooms you have were filled during the period of the visit, if they were all filled; where did you housed the remaining 2,002 people?
And that’s assuming they were foreign visitors.
So you see it one thing to come out and babble, but if it does not make sense perhaps it would be better to simply shut your mouth!
Here is another bit of crap you spewed: by 2015 you are going to have ninety (90,000) people visiting Dominica. My question to you is this; how many Hotels you hope to have built within two years? Now, I do not know if you are talking about tourists arriving by ship and leave the same day.
However, and note this Sir, Piper; if you have only six hundred so called hotel rooms in Dominica, to accommodate ninety thousand people, and correct me if I am wrong: it seems to me that 90,000/600 = 150; so I assume you are going place one hundred and fifty (150) persons in one room.
One of us seems crazy, and it is not I the kid!
You are excited about two million ($2.5) five hundred thousand dollars, as if that is a big deal, what you fail to disclose is wether you are quoting East Caribbean Currency or U.S., because that which you are so happy about translate in each of the twenty-six hundred-two people spent a total of $959.33 cents each, that again is proof that you dealt with Dominicans who returned, and stayed with their families, and that is not counted as tourism in my book!
Francisco Etienne-Dods Telemaque
Stay off the weed sir or better yet smoke more.
Man you could not have said it better,
DFC is government boots on the ground, but just step in there and the culture being prcaticed is anything Dominican is substandard, they prefer to use all kind of justification to continue with a festival which is costing goverment millions every year, label regional artist from martinique, Jamaica, Trinidad Haiti and the other islands as international artist. The very little experience in anything related to festival production is what the see in the other islands not on the international standards. Government needs an independent review of DFC to find out why the general public seem to be in a different opinion than what Piper’s DFC thinks of the festival.
Francisco Telemaque wrote, “So you see it one thing to come out and babble, but if it does not make sense perhaps it would be better to simply shut your mouth!”
this sir is very good advice,but you obviously fail to adhere to the very same advice that you give. before i comment futher i am going to give you the opportunity to read over your lengthy diatribe to see if anything written made even a moducum of sense.failure to do so will give me no choice but to expose your stupidity.
Come on Mr.Telemaque!
‘However, and note this Sir, Piper; if you have only six hundred so called hotel rooms in Dominica, to accommodate ninety thousand people, and correct me if I am wrong: it seems to me that 90,000/600 = 150; so I assume you are going place one hundred and fifty (150) persons in one room’.
Re-check your numbers and cut the man (Piper) some slack. The 90,000 people are expected in 2015 but they will not all arrive on the same day and will not stay in DA for equal number of days.
Are you man enough to apologize?
You see, some of you are so dumb, I feel I am as if I am humiliating myself to even dignify your nonsense with a response.
If your commonsense was not beneath that of an illiterate peasant, you would have realized that the man anticipates 90,000 people visiting for the Creole festival in 2015.
The conversation is about the Creole festival, is it not?
You lack cognitive thinking and understanding, you are illiterate and that’s the bottom line, you lack comprehension, thus you are unable to interpret what you read the same at the fool “just A Thought.”
If you were not a fool you would have realized in 2012, more than 2,600 tourist visited Dominica, I am sure that the Ships bringing tourists to Dominica, transports more that amount of people at anyone time. So, which of us should adhere to our uneducated mind and opinions?
I have a name; what’s yours, you are too stupid to state your name?
Francisco Etienne-Dods Telemaque
We all know it takes a lot to put an event of this magnitude together but Piper looks like he could do well with an eggnog and some cacao tea to wake up a bit.
Mr.Piper…one can view economic success from many vantage points.I will give you two with reservations,exposure and visitors, although I may add,they were not very successful in comparison to other venues,eg.Jazz festival or Cropover.To be fair,those other countries have better infrastructure in place so to compare them with us in absolute terms and all what that means would not be fair.However,what I think would be fair in determining how successful and great 2012 was is letting us know how much money was spent in producing the event and how much money was made from that production.I noticed no mention of that was made in the DNO piece so I am to assume it wasn’t articulated by you,thus its absence..If the event could not cover its costs,then one can correctly say that it was not economically successful as an event,never mind that Tourist came,visitors came,hotels made some money..all that good stuff.That may be true,but also let us know how much was spent and how much was collected at the gates….That too is an aspect of economic success,not just restaurants,hotels,guest houses,etc.made money.It has to be all encompassing(one package deal)proposition to be touted as such a great success.To produce something that by itself constantly losses money just because in the aggregate you might make some money is a very poor business model.If a business was run that way it would soon go out of business….advetizing costs far exceeding your sales(revenue generation)…Wow!!
I live in the U.S.A. and I have been to festivals around the Caribbean and the creole fest can measure up to alot of music festivals out there.
This Piper fella is once again calling on the private sector to sponsor aspects of the WCMF, but we continue to note his deafening silence on repeated calls by the same private sector for the restrictions on Sunday trading to be liberalised; a move which has already been identified as a boost for the tourism industry which Piper is a focul point of. We can all recall seeing cruise ships in port on Sunday and Roseau is effectively shut down because there is a law, Chap. 19:10, which mandates the shutting down. What is Piper’s view on removing the restriction? The private sector must know his views if his requests for sponsorship is to be given any consideration.
What, 2,606 visitors for the year 2012 and they expect to get 90,000 by 2015? that’s in 2 years, how unrealistic, did they have a statistician check those numbers? Didn’t they say we had a drop in cruise ship calls?
Have they ever see tourism overseas? they spend big bucks to attract tourists, and to make sure the tourists want to spend AND come back we don’t even have night life on a regular basis, pass Roseau tonight and see how dread it is in the CAPITAL of the country. We’re advertising eco-tourism, and what percentage of the tourists will want to come and climb mountain for you?
We have 365 rivers, we should have a water park or something at least.
Drop in economic growth and we clinging onto tourism to sustain us.. Lord help us.
You people just talk about we should have this and that. A lot of nigh clubs have opened up in Dominica and failed because we don’t have the large population of people partying every night to make them profitable. A movie theater couldn’t even stay in business here. So is not just to have night life and water park, we have too think of how we going to maintain these things too. I think the festival itself has brought a lot of visitors to Dominica. Maybe it could be promoted better maybe the product could be a little better but it will not be as big as reggae sumfest in jamaica and jazz festival in st. lucia. A lot has to be put in place in the country before you see than influx of visitors.
then perhaps they should stop wasting the money on listless travel and use it to utilize better technology. there’s such a thing called conference call and video conferencing. Just imagine the huge impact of Facebook and other social media sites. Take a leaf out of Rosalie Bay Resort they really deliver on their promises to even attract the likes of Richard Branson, who by the way can single handedly get us that much needed international access port.
Please, read this article carefully before commenting. The 2,606 visitors quoted by Mr. Piper came specifically for the WCMF. Obviously, this is no the total number of stay-over visitors for the year. No, I’m not particularly impressed by this number but we should stick with the facts.
“2,606 visitors came to the island in 2012 for the 16th edition of the World Creole Music Festival (WCMF)”.
what part of this quote did you not understand?. obviously the 2606 people he spoke of was those who came for the festival. the 90,000 he later spoke of was for tourism in general.please read before you make nonsensesical comments.
i gave u a dowm by mistake
to so two ups for you 
The festival has attracted a lot of visitors to the island since it first started. To I believe that the accessibility of Dominica on a whole is what prevents us from getting the large number of visitors like other islands. The festival is a well put together show and far from a normal blocko. You must be mad.
If you look at the report from the Chronicle, the amount of money being wasted is incredible. They spent more money travelling than in promoting.
The situation in Dominica where a small group of extremely incompetent people can simply keep on failing and failing is no longer acceptable.
I dont care how well you can articulate yourself or how highly regarded your family is. The upshot is a glorified pencil pusher with little track record of actual success is pulling in a good salary and having a good time without actually accomplishing jack .
They spend too much money givig VIP tickets all all and saundry. Ministers, wifes and friends of ministers wifes, family of ministers’ wifes, friends of Ministers family, Ministers girlfriends, Ministers child mothers (five mothers – five tickets plus the children of each mother) etc. etc. calculate and you are already in the red. Let everybody contribute to the event by buying a ticket.
Here we go again before rain drop politic is the main topic try not to become like the middle east we are not together any more and trying to drag Dominica down with our nonsense politic there is a season for politic and lets enjoy the good times that other countries don’t have like DA
Missing the point Mr.Piper, Dominica can only make strides please, please if we think expansive..
Reading what you said, is a joke to anyone who is a Professional…
Their is a difference between “World” and “Caribbean Orientated”, as a Professional you seem to lack the Latitude to think wide.
The Creole Festival needs to attract numbers and World Hype,which is the case..
We keep pretending we doing well, whilst other Caribbean sis and bros are Bigger,Wider and Better In terms of focus Goals.
As a Professional you should have the vision to Ask the Policy makers including the Government to Have the WCMF,budgeted annual as a headline tool For the Tourist Industry…
Dominica can only grow with folks who think “BIG” and bit the bullet…but sadly they fade away through being highly ignorant and in that slavery Mood which is a cancer to Dominica..
This Festival was a tool to flagship Dominica around the World Stage,think they need new blood in there, folks who follow the Music trends 24/7 12 months a year, but the WCMF is just another blocko which,,is “hey lea we try a tink nuh”
Results are snails in a covered box product!