From:TheBahamasWeekly.com
Bahamas Tourism Officials Driving Business in Europe
By Syann Thompson Press Attaché The Bahamas High Commission
Jul 17, 2014 - 11:55:06 PM
Left to right: Anthony Stuart, Director of Europe, Joy Jibrilu, Director General and Tommy Thompson, Deputy Director General. (Photo: Bahamas High Commission)
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London, England
– Tourism
officials from The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism have been in London for
ten days to drive business to The Bahamas and meet with staff from the
Europe offices. The team included Director General Joy Jibrilu, Deputy
Director General Tommy Thompson, Director of
Airlift Development Tyrone Sawyer and new Director of Europe Anthony
Stuart.
Joy
Jibrilu hit the ground running in her new role as The Ministry of
Tourism’s new Director General. Mrs. Jibrilu along with
her senior management team conducted business meetings with tour
operators throughout the UK and Germany over a period of ten days. The
Director General stated that she and her team mean business and they are
serious about driving up numbers from the European
market.
“We know that our brand is strong and everywhere we go name recognition for The Bahamas is high. Now our job is to translate
that into increasing the number of visitors from Europe to The Bahamas,” said Mrs Jibrilu.
The senior management team from Tourism had discussions with major tour operators including Thomas Cooke Germany, Thomas Cooke
UK, De Touristic in Germany, Virgin Tours as well as other major tour operators in the UK.
“We’ve
had very good and promising discussions with airlines in the UK and in
Germany. The understanding is that we need
to increase airlift into The Bahamas, to fill all the rooms we have
coming on stream particularly with BahaMar opening December this year.
We discussed direct air routes and also connecting existing airlines in
North America from Europe routing them to The
Bahamas. Some of those hubs that are able to do that are New York,
Atlanta, Orlando and Miami. There are already existing partnerships of
some airlines like Virgin and JetBlue, British Airways and American
Airlines and Lufthansa. We want to tap into this and
get airlift increased from Europe to The Bahamas,” she stated.
Left to right: Anthony Stuart, Director of Europe, Joy Jibrilu, Director General, (top centre) Tyrone Sawyer, Director of Airlift Development and Tommy Thompson, Deputy Director General along with Tourism office staff from France, Germany, Italy, London and Russia.
(Photo: Bahamas High Commission)
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Anthony
Stuart is the new Director of Europe and will be responsible for all
the offices located in France, Germany, Italy, London and Russia.
“We
know that there is great potential in Europe, we want to see those
numbers grow again and by having a dedicated Director
of Europe who will be based in London, he will be able to meet face to
face with operators. We’re showing that we are serious, we mean business
and we want to see our numbers grow again from the UK and Europe,”
stated Mrs Jibrilu.
The
senior management team also conducted interviews on traveling to The
Bahamas with niche’ tourism media houses for publication
in magazines.
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