One Caribbean Canada Holds Inaugural Event in Toronto

As Canadians continue to change their travel habits to avoid the USA, sun destinations like the Caribbean region are strategizing to capture that increasing market. One Caribbean Canada held its inaugural media event Tuesday night in Toronto.

The association that aims to promote the region held a media marketplace with 11 of the organization’s 24 Caribbean countries attending.

“The CTO closed its doors just before the pandemic and I continued to work with many Caribbean countries though our PR agency and because I was working with five of them, I continued doing trunk shows and such,” One Caribbean Canada’s Founder Nancy Drolet explained to Travel Market Report Canada.

“The only way we can promote the region together is to create something ourselves, and that’s what we did.”

The association is membership driven company but is run as its own association.  Events like Burlington Beats the January Blues and road shows in Ontario and Quebec aim to raise awareness of the Caribbean and One Caribbean Canada’s website, which Drolet says serves as a resource for both advisors and consumers.

“As we continue to grow and continue to grow the website as a central spot for information for advisors and their clients, we want to remind advisors that we’re not a booking site, we are a resource information for training and to send links to clients,” she says.

“If clients come to our website  we send them back to advisors. I’m dating myself a little bit here, but we’re like the Pan Am Guide except only electronic now,” she added with a laugh.

Any country “that touches the sea” can join – Nicaragua, Martinique and Guadaloupe being the most recent, and Drolet says they expect to finalize their 25^th country soon.

As inter-region connectivity continues to be a hot topic in the Caribbean, One Caribbean Canada is also adding dedicated areas on their website for airline and ferry routes as well as information regarding longer stays and niche areas such as diving.

“We want to encourage Canadians to visit other islands.  Canadians used to love to island hop but we’ve stopped doing that because the routes were no longer there or they were not reliable.  Now there are new air and ferry routes with excellent connections and expansions.  We are adding them to One Caribbean Canada’s website, and we also want to encourage hotels, DMCs and dive operators to join us.”

Tuesday night’s event was MC’d by Erica Jackman, former Director of Tourism for Antigua and Barbuda and currently the Coordinator Strategic Projects – Tourism Development at the City of Brampton, as well as the Coordinator of FDI Africa and Caribbean Markets. Destinations in attendance were Jamaica, Bahamas, Nassau, Martinique, Anguilla and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Nassau and Paradise Island, Curacao, Grenada, St. Martin and St. Maarten.

Though Drolet says it’s too early to see the visitation numbers on those who have moved their vacation plans from destinations in the US to the Caribbean, she is anecdotally getting more and more requests for information regarding longer stays.

“What we have seen since the election, is that people are asking about longer stays in the Caribbean. We are trying to provide more information regarding longer stays on our site, including the paperwork that’s required for stays 90 days for each country.

We’re delighted as they always came anyway but we will continue to welcome Canadians to the Caribbean.”