HELP! WE NEED MONEY FOR TOURISM!!!

I'm sorry...I can only read this and just LAUGH...LAUGH...LAUGH.

AVP Seeks Tourism Fund

ARUBA – The Aruba Hotel and Tourism Association (Ahata), our entrepreneurs, and some airline companies are currently conducting a petition amongst the members. In that petition, the signers urgently appeal to the government to immediately make money available for the promotion of the tourism. Soon as all partners have seen the petition, it will be given to the government.


The Aruba Marketing Retreat took place in New York recently (I wonder WHERE in NYC this was hosted???). The businesses and organizations in the tourism field that took part in the retreat expressed their concern about the lack of money for a big promotion campaign. They are of the opinion that the negative publicity of last year after the disappearance of Natalee Holloway had hurt the tourism bad. A big campaign would contribute to a recovery. (WE ARE WINNING!!!)


The government has cut the budget and made it impossible to start such campaign. Representatives of Aruba Tourism Authority (ATA) indicated during the meeting that the available budget is lower than the amount budgeted by the advertisement bureau that performs the promotion for Aruba.


Another point of concern is that the competing destinations in the region have actually increased their promotion budget. Besides, the campaigns that Aruba has conducted in the past years are not modernized. In the petition, the government is specifically asked to make an amount of 13 million dollars available to give the promotion of Aruba a big impulse and prevent a further decline.


They emphasize the importance of this by indicating that 85 percent of the jobs in Aruba have to do with the tourism. All the businesses that have to do with the tourism are approached with the request to sign the petition and once this is done, the petition with the signatures will be given to the government.