Canadian travellers are demanding more diversity and greater options and Caribbean destinations must offer a diverse product if they are to remain attractive to this important market, president of Air Canada Leisure Group Craig Landry said.
Mr. Landry, whose responsibilities include Air Canada Vacation and the leisure carrier Air Canada Rouge, will deliver the feature address on Friday 16 September at the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s State of the Tourism Industry Conference (SOTIC) taking place in Barbados from 14-16 September.
However, in an interview ahead of the event, the airline executive spoke of evolving consumer preferences, from accommodation to activities.
“From the perspective of the consumer it’s all about choice, so choice means we need diversity in the type of products we can offer,” Mr. Landry explained. “What we’re seeing is that with different types of markets, whether it’s from family size or whether it’s adults and couples, their needs are different in terms of the types of amenities and the types of services that respond to them and so we need to make sure we have segmentation and the ability to be able to address that.”
He added, “We’re also seeing changes in people who are booking not necessarily non-inclusive – so that can be villas or people who might want to do some of their own cooking or some of their own travel experiences and excursions when they’re there; they’re looking for a different type of living aboard type of approach when they stay in a destination and we need product to accommodate that and we need to make sure we have enough breadth and depth of our product and diversity in the type of things we can offer to satisfy different segments of travel,” he added.
A transcript of the full interview, as well as an audio recording, can be found at http://sotic.onecaribbean.org/speaker/craig-landry/.
The State of the Tourism Industry Conference, which has as its theme, Honouring Our Legacy, Defining Our Future, is the pre-eminent tourism gathering in the region. It brings together tourism decision-makers, including ministers, commissioners and directors of tourism, hotel and airline executives, travel agents, students, the media and persons directly and indirectly involved in tourism. It is preceded by CTO business meetings, including meetings of the board of directors and the Council of Ministers and Commissioners of Tourism.
This year’s conference at the Hilton Barbados Resort is organized in collaboration with Barbados’ Ministry of Tourism and International Transport and the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc and is sponsored by LIAT, the Caribbean Airline and Libris by Photoshelter.
Lia is a sponsor. How about service improvement to DA
Maybe We can market the journey from Antigua,Barbados or Puerto Rico to Dominica as having greater diversity with more options. The uncertainty of arriving on time or even arriving may seem like an adventure to certain types of tourists. The gamble of ‘leaving island any time’ might excite a certain segment of the travelling public. The appeal of camping at the ‘new’ Moroccan hotel on the beach may be a huge selling point. We may not have much,but we need to take advantage of what we already have.