by Kristen Ku
BELIZE CITY, Mon. Apr. 24, 2023
Ever since the world came to a halt, during the pandemic years, technology has been the only and main source of communication with the outside world. Interestingly enough, technology seeped into different areas of communication and developed great popularity as it has taken over almost every thriving business out there, through marketing.
The tourism decrease seen in our little country has been drastic and the Belize Tourism Board (BTB) has been actively working to get it back to what it used to be pre-Covid-19. The Building on Our Momentum (BOOM) initiative, which started in 2022, was once again held via a forum on Friday, April 21, at the Best Western Belize Biltmore Plaza in Belize City. This time, however, it has expanded, partnering with marketing agencies from the United States (US), Canada, and Europe. The aim is to attract tourists through the use of technology, specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI), using a foreign marketing platform to feature Belize in hopes to build BTB’s momentum.
The forum was held to inform the public of the innovations taking place within the tourism marketing industry online and abroad for 2023 and 2024, as well as introduce the partners of this project. Michelle Bowers Flowers, BTB’s Director of Marketing and Industry Relations, was quite excited as she explained about BOOM’s initiative to grow Belize’s tourism and how it will affect various other areas.
“At the end of the day, this is a ripple effect. We do the marketing, the Belize Tourism Board’s role is to create awareness and, of course, our private sector closes the sale, so we are very excited. Any marketing efforts that we do at the end of the day will value our stakeholders, and that to us is the end result of increasing arrivals,” said Flowers.
As beneficial and efficient as AI may be, its use can take a while to grasp, considering the vast ways to reach the digital market. However, with the help of the US, which is now handling all of Belize’s marketing, Cole Zimmerman, the Representative of Zimmerman Agency, explained how distinct its use will be for Belize.
“The way that the BTB is going to be using it in the US is going to be an AI-developed product that it hones in on marketing, so we could actually predict who’s going to be coming to the US. So, it’s predictive marketing efforts to say who’s going to come here, how much money they’re going to spend here, and then following along with that look alike audience, to figure out who else we could be targeting,” explained Zimmerman.
Hon. Anthony Mahler, the Minister of Tourism, spoke about how the new technology will help us better use Belize’s limited resources.
“It’s just using our creativity, using the limited resources we have as a small destination and a small budget destination to be able to compete, and how do we do that? By embracing technology. I believe that technology gives us, especially the digital component of it, an opportunity to be able to compete neck and neck with some of the bigger budget destinations,” said Mahler.
Other presenters that took the stage covered three different segments, on sustainability as a marketing tool, artificial intelligence and marketing, and also the retention of employees.