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The Belize Tourism Industry Association today held its 34th Annual General Meeting at the Radisson. The main objective is for all members such as hoteliers, resort and restaurant owners among others  to gather and evaluate how the year has been for their businesses and the overall tourism sector. We dropped by and first, we found out more about the association and what are the benefits to members.

John Burgos - Executive Director, BTIA
“This is one of the main events that we host for our membership which basically we provide a report on what has transpired over the last 12 months in terms of our finances and our projects and various works and benefits we offer to our membership and at the same time we tell them what they can look forward to for the next year. 3 key benefits that we offer, we offer marketing opportunities, we have two signature projects we do, we have the tourism expo and we have the Destination Belize magazine which we are going to the next publications. So as a member you automatically going to be mentioned on the magazine so your information is going to be accessible so if you are a restaurant or a hotel ,tourists reading the magazine are going to know you exist, where you are located, how to contact you and how to use your services. In training we have expanded a lot in over the past 2 years in terms of training opportunities whether it is culinary training, whether it is customer service training, waiting staff training, housekeeping training, we are providing training in all those areas. And then the 3rd benefit is advocacy, we advocate for a lot of issues that we believe in. The main focus of the BTIA as an umbrella organisation is to promote the sustainable management and development of our natural resources.â€￾

Burgos also reflected on some the challenges and setbacks in the year.

John Burgos
“Accomplishments that we did right now in terms of advocacy we just received word from cabinet on Tuesday that they will be banning gill nets in Belize, so we are very happy to know that we have been working with this for over a year now so we are waiting for the official details of how this new law and the banning of gill nets is going to be implemented in 2020. In terms of challenges, we are very concerned right now, there are phenomenon that are beyond our control, that we can’t handle, we have sargassum is impacting the entire Yucatan Peninsulas, Quintana Roo, Belize and all islands in the Caribbean you know, those things are beyond our control, what we can do is make it, be more efficient in managing and reducing the negative impacts but then you have issue of safety and security, increase in crime that is something that trickles down to the tourism industry, we know that has impacts.â€￾

There are over 400 BTIA members.