30 October 2011
The Jamaica Tourist Board Continues Its Extensive 2011 Support For UK Travel Agents
2011 has been a busy and productive year for the Jamaica Tourist Board, with their ongoing and unrivalled support for travel agents. Even with the CTO Caribbean month coming to a close, their commitment to supporting their partners shows no sign of losing momentum as they roll out a further two online training modules and a series of autumn fam trips.
The online courses, ‘Getting to Know Jamaica' and ‘Jamaica the Playground', consist of a short slideshow followed by 20 multiple-choice questions, offering agents the opportunity to learn more about what makes Jamaica the perfect holiday destination in a fun, interactive and user-friendly way. The training programmes are free to all travel agents and are available through TWacademy, at http://twacademy.co.uk.
September, in particular, has been a highly productive month including the following areas of activity:
Jamaica Five-O Mega Fam
A significant focus for the Jamaica Tourist Board in 2012 is the 50th Anniversary of Independence. To help launch and celebrate this milestone, September kicked-off with the ‘Jamaica Five-O' Mega Fams. This included hosting 150 UK travel agents on a series of one week fam trips during September and October 2011.
Training Workshops for Travel Trade
The Jamaica Tourist Board has continued their activity by keeping the travel trade industry up-to-date on destination developments through a series of Jamaica themed monthly breakfast training workshops and training brunches for both agents and home workers across the UK.
Jamaica Tourist Board Island Vibes E-Newsletter
The quarterly trade E-Newsletter highlights all the latest island news, events and relevant hotel and airline offers available to the UK travel trade industry. The ‘Spectacular Attractions' page helps agents keep up-to-date on what's new on the island and the competition page offers the opportunity to win prizes - including a bottle of Jamaica Rum!
MCC Cricket Team Trip to Jamaica
14th September 2011 saw the Jamaica Tourist Board team up with Virgin Atlantic to fly the MCC Cricket team into Montego Bay for a one-off tournament (match) against a local Jamaican Invitational team made up of past and present professional (West Indies) players, such as cricketer Sadiki Bolt and legendary fast bowler Courtney Walsh. The MCC (Mole Cricket Club) team was composed of UK tour operators and specialist travel agents and a sport journalist from The Sun.
Isle of Man Consumer and Trade Shows
No place is too small, so the Jamaica Tourist Board took some Island Vibes to the town of Douglas on the Isle of Man for one of the travel communities best agent nights in recent memory. Additionally, in partnership with two local agents the JTB also hosted two in-store consumer events, as well as calling on other key local travel agents to update then on the Jamaica destination product.
Elizabeth Fox, Regional Director of the Jamaica Tourist Board commented:
"With the 50th Anniversary of Independence taking place next year, we plan to continue to inform, educate and support our invaluable agent partners through a number of schemes and trade initiatives. This ensures everyone is fully up to date with the wealth of activity and developments across the island, as well as keeping Jamaica front of mind when selling an ideal holiday destination."
