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ST JOHN’S, Antigua -- The Ministry of Tourism and the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority will host the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Summit on Monday, February 13.

The Ministry of Tourism has recognized that there have been fundamental changes and challenges taking place in the tourism sector nationally, regionally and globally. To this end, the minister of tourism, civil aviation and culture, John Maginley, has agreed to engage tourism stakeholders in dialogue towards forging a common future for the vital tourism industry.

The objectives of the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Summit are:

(i) To review the competitiveness of the Antigua and Barbuda tourism Industry;

(ii) To work together to develop common solutions and actions to grow the competitiveness and sustainability of the tourism industry;

(iii) To achieve more synergies and more powerful marketing, promotions, training, visitor arrivals and expenditures, more linkages and more growth opportunities for local SMMEs through joint actions and partnerships for prosperity.

(iv) To obtain buy-in and consensus on the proposed future actions and strategies identified by stakeholders to craft an action plan for the future.

Key stakeholders that are being invited include the media, trade unions, Customs and Immigration, hotels and resorts, cruise operators, tour operators, taxi drivers, ports, airports and investment authority, training institutions, heritage organizations; police and security; and vendors.

The tourism summit will be facilitated by Dr Auliana Poon, CEO of Tourism Intelligence International (TII), which is retained by the Ministry of Tourism to carry out industry surveys and market analysis in North America and Europe. The organization is credited with inventing ‘responsible tourism’ in South Africa; developing the ‘tourism begins at home’ programme that sparked the turnaround of The Bahamas industry in the early 1990s; developing the wedding and honeymoon market in St. Lucia; and the architect of Abu Dhabi’s tourism thrust.

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