Sustainability seems to be on-trend, so says the BTIA as they launched the theme for the 20th Edition of Destination Belize Magazine today: "Reef to Rainforest, People to People, Our Green Belize."
And, Executive Director John Burgos today told us that his team focused on highlighting the ways in which Belize, as a destination appeals to the core values of the conscious traveller:
John Burgos, Executive Director, BTIA
"Well as you know once you are publishing a material for people to be able to understand what you are trying to portray, its essential for you to be able to know what the core values are and what is the core product and services you want to highlight, so the challenge has remain that as the number one proirity for my team to be ab;e to produce that quality. Now so at the 20th edition we saw that we were able to accomplish that based on the theme that we chose and the team is basically what highlights what the editorial content - it leads what everything is going to be, what the cover is going to be. Today we only launched the theme, so October we are going to launch the covers of the magazine and we are going to launch the actual magazine with all the content. You look around us we have a lot of marine reserves, we are a lot of forest reserve, we have a lot of world heritage sites that has been removed from the endangered list. We have a moratorium on our offshore exploration, we have an initiative to banning gillnets. There is a lot of success stories. We have a world renowned jaguar corridor reserve. These are the things that we need to showcase a little bit more. If you look at the global trends, do we have a more conscious travelers? More travelers that are aware of the issues that are affecting our planet, our environment, our waters, our forests, deforestation, fires - you look at the news and see all the negative things that are happening, the real things that are happening. The majority of the travellers are understanding and cognizant of those facts so they are trying to look at where do I go where I am not going to have that impact, where is the new destination and also it goes with people want to get to know people - how warm our people are, how unique our cultures are - the creole, Garifuna, Mestizo, Maya, East Indian, Mennonite - as much as we have been promoting over the last 30 years, people still don't know and we could never highlight that enough. We want to be able to capture that essence so that the travelers are going to be able to say you know what Belize is where I want to go."
The Official Magazine and Cover launches for the 21st edition of Destination Belize will take place in October.
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