7 News Belize

Copa and Tropic Team Up
posted (June 15, 2018)
We met Heredia at a press briefing this morning in San Pedro Town. Tropic Air and Latin American powerhouse Copa Airlines have signed what's called an "interline agreement". It allows customers to purchase connecting flights on a single ticket, from, let's say, a South American city all the way to Placencia or San Pedro. Tropic Air and Copa reps explained it today at the Sunbreeze Hotel:...

Christopher Didier- VP, Global Sales, COPA
"What this partnership gives us between Tropic and COPA is the ability for the costumer to book directly with his travel agency a domestic destination in Belize, not only Belize International Airport. Now, travel agencies will be able to book from any of the COPA destinations, in let's say here in San Pedro SPR, iata codes, so they will be able to fly from any COPA destination into San Pedro with a single process and it will be a single ticket."

John Greif III - President, Tropic Air
"Well, we now show up on every computer reservation system that shows COPA. So, if the online travel agency had COPA in their panoply of airlines, they now have Tropic. So, now some lady in PG that might have family in South America can go to the Tropic Air PG office, tell us what she wants to do, we can give her advice and she can buy one ticket that takes her from PG to Belize International to Panama and then one stop to anywhere in South America or pretty much anywhere else in the Caribbean. That is another big part of this. Belizeans and Central Americans can connect to the rest of the Caribbean without having to go through Miami because a lot of us can't get US visas."

Steve Schulte- CEO, Tropic Air
"Before today it was not so simple. For a COPA costumer to buy a ticket to San Pedro or to the destinations of the Tropics, they had to have some local knowledge of help to understand that when they arrived in Belize, they would arrive at the International Airport not at their final destination."

John Greif III
"Most people would say bwai it's just not worth it. I just go to Miami or Barbados or Trinidad or something. I just won't go through all of the trouble. You have to go online, and what is the old joke about getting information from the internet? It is like trying to get a sip of water from a fire hose. You click on and you get all this information and a lot of it which isn't even correct. So, this really simplifies things."

Christopher Didier
"If you want to make tourism grow you need to make it easy for customers. If they have multiple connections, if they have multiple tickets, it's a hassle for them. So, Tropic and COPA, we are trying to make their lives easier to be able to travel to any destination in Belize."

Tropic serves 15 destinations from the Phillip Goldson International Airport which Copa flies to twice weekly. Copa has flights from 75 cities in the Americas to its hub in Panama.

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