Marie Walker, Anguilla’s Tourism Representative for North America, on the island for this week’s start of Lit Fest, a Literary Jollification, organised by the Anguilla Tourist Board, and her New York office, said the event was more of a Caribbean focus.
Mrs. Walker said that due to significant budgetary constraints, both her office and the Anguilla Tourist were unable to extensively market the event as they would have liked, but never the less it had received wide exposure in the Caribbean region.
“What we have done is to have taken a grass roots approach to the marketing of the event,” she told reporters on Monday. “We have taken it to social media with very effective email broadcasts to all universities in the United States; we arranged live and taped radio interviews between the Director of Tourism in Anguilla and all of the leading radio stations throughout the Caribbean; and we have also sent a lot of media releases throughout the region.
“We expect that this year’s event may be more of a Caribbean focus response. This is largely attributed to the very high airfares coming out of New York even on our very low-cost Jet Blue. Someone who called to book for the festival said she hoped it would all work, because the airfare was 1283 dollars for less than four hours [flying] and this is a low-cost carrier. So we see that as a grave concern for us, therefore limiting our ability to attract a largely overseas audience as we had hoped for. The airlines have started to consolidate which is obviously out of our control. As a result we have been limited in our outreach in terms of getting participation from our larger markets.”
Mrs. Walker said that Anguilla’s new Public Relations Agency had done a significant job in its media outreach to some of the major media outlets in the United States which was most effective. “The event has been publicised overseas but I think, in terms of the returns, probably for this year, they will be a little more modest as most first year events,” she added. “One of the things we are hoping to do is launch the date for next year at the end of this festival.”
Asked how she saw tourism arrivals in Anguilla in general for the rest of the year, she said: “We have to be very conservative because the region is gravely affected. We have a significant concern about airlift. It is all well and good that we can promote each of our destinations, but if people have a difficult time getting here – and the cost is prohibitive – it certainly is going to limit their abilities to travel. With the consolidation and the fuel prices, the airlines have taken advantage of that; and the prices have not really reflected any decrease in spite of the fact that the fuel cost has been lowered.
“Having said that, we are very cautiously optimistic that the season will pull through to the point where, if it is not hopefully on par with last year, it will be a little above. It is really hard to say now because a lot of the bookings we continue to reap are a result of last minute reservations.”
