The National Belize Tourism Industry Association (BTIA) held its 2nd annual Innovation and Tourism Talk at the Radisson Fort George in Belize City on Monday, September 30th. The aim of the workshop was for stakeholders involved in tourism to learn how to grow their business to reach larger markets by using digital platforms.
From 8:30AM to 3:30PM, the workshop focused on two presentations. The first was a practical on video marketing for the promotion of tourist destinations, facilitated by C.E.O. of consultancy firm MORETURISMO Juan Miguel Moreno. The second presentation was a practical guide for the use of Google tools for trips, such as Google Trips, Flights, Maps, how to set up campaigns in ADWORDs and position oneself into international markets facilitated by Google Account Strategist Shamara Valdez Rubio.
Rubio is based in Mexico but travels the region sharing knowledge on the various functions of Google. ‘Google My Business,’ is a free tool where you literally go online, create an account and verify your business. “When I come to Belize and Google a restaurant near me or where should I stay, I can connect with these businesses. It’s a free tool, everyone has access to it, and I think that’s one of the examples today that was huge during the presentation. Something that was really exciting is just realizing the potential of tools and opportunities that Google has to offer. I think in talking one-on-one, and in the presentations, a lot of people were like, ‘Wow, I didn’t know this existed.’ And so simple, first of all, sharing that knowledge with businesses and these stakeholders, but also the next step: how do we take action on this? How do we make sure we get online? How do we make sure we are taking advantage of all these opportunities? So I think that’s the takeaway of the workshop,” said Rubio. (Excerpted from https://edition.channel5belize.com)
BTIA Executive Director John Burgos reiterated how educational the workshop was for the people in the tourism industry. “This initiative, began last year, the main thing is we want to provide a learning experience for the stakeholders in tourism so that they will be able to better position themselves online to reach a global market. At the end of the day, we want to have more tourists come and experience Belize. So what they will be experiencing today is exposure on video marketing and using the Google platform to be able to sell their properties, their destinations better,” he said. Burgos further stated that Moreno’s presentation shared simple tips that can be cost-effective, but most impactful for small and medium scale tourism projects to the attendees. “He is showing how to use your smartphones to produce very good videos about your products and services and the experiences so that they can learn to do this on their own. We have a lot of properties in Belize that don’t have the big budgets where they are going to be able to pay three thousand dollars to get a nice thirty-second video. No, we are showing you that you don’t need to do that; you can do it on your own. And we are giving you the tools and all the training you need to do those,” he said. (Excerpted from https://edition.channel5belize.com)
The BTIA acknowledges that tourism stakeholders in Belize need to keep up with an ever-changing market; therefore, it is important to provide stakeholders with marketing tips and tactics to give them the knowledge of how to intelligently use their data to reach their audience via digital platforms.
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