7 News Belize

Former Tourism Director Speaks: Says Ministry “Moved The Goalposts”
posted (September 27, 2011)
On Friday we reported that Director Of Tourism Seleni Matus had abruptly resigned.

She met with her staff and left the office by 4:00 on Friday. Today, neither the BTB Board of Directors nor the Ministry of Tourism has issued any formal statement confirming her resignation.

But it's a fact, and we do so know because she told it to us herself when she gave 7news a sort of exit interview on Saturday. We asked what everyone has been asking us: why leave after just 19 months? She told us that the Ministry of Tourism was moving the goalposts on her:

Seleni Matus, Fmr. Director Of Tourism
"With any type of development you will always have that eye on anything that is working, so good things draw attention, and I believe in this case there was a proposal to shift a significant portion of the architecture of the BTB into the Ministry of Tourism. While that may make sense eventually - there is a process for that and it can't be done overnight, of course, and that would have very profound impacts on the budget of course and the sharing of funding between the institutions."

Jules Vasquez
"Would that have undermined the programs, the strategies that you have been pursuing?"

Seleni Matus, Fmr. Director Of Tourism
"It certainly would. Any profound changes on the heels of what it is that we have been working on - it's a foundation that we have poured over the past 17 months or so - that is starting to solidify and show some results here. And so the timing is off, and so, clearly, there needs to be good strategic thinking behind when it is that we sit around the table and look at what the differentiated roles of the Ministry of Tourism and the Belize Tourism Board are."

"For us at the Belize Tourism Board to continue sustaining the results that we have commenced to demonstrate does require a very specific and enabling environment that the Ministry of Tourism plays a key part in facilitating. That enabling environment definitely shifted or is shifting."

Jules Vasquez
"If all these key elements were varied just as the momentum was building up to a critical mass. Were you then betrayed or undermined?"

Seleni Matus, Fmr. Director Of Tourism
"I believe that as we have mentioned already, the goalposts definitely shifted, that the terms of engagement under which I was hired in have evolved and under the new scenario in which there definitely is a higher level of interest for the board to be more involved in the day to day of the organization and in which we have the ministry looking to perhaps expand its scope, possibly at the expense of the Belize Tourism Board, then that creates a perfect storm in which there is very little progress that can be sustained and much effort is spent in the politics of the scenario, in fending off the various elements that are really causing distraction and presenting a quite untenable environment in which to work. So there is a point in any process in which the team leader or the general manager, whomever it is, will really take a look and decide what is the probability of us sustaining results here versus the level of effort that it takes to really deliver those results? And in those cases, where clearly there is much more effort spent on rhetoric and politics, then there is much less space for delivering results. And in those cases, highly strung professionals who will more than likely opt out because there is a small probability for actually delivering the types of change, innovation at the pace needed to keep up what the international marketplace demands."

"At this point I believe that Belize Tourism Board is probably looking more for an administrator and less for so for a chief executive officer."

Tomorrow, we'll have part two of that interview when we ask Matus whether her abrupt departure was made easier by the fact that she is a Belizean American and can always return to the States - which we understand she did yesterday.

We'll also ask for her prognosis of the challenges ahead for Belize's tourist industry with the changes which are currently afoot.

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