CARIBBEAN YOUTH ENGAGE IN DYNAMIC DEBATE AT CTO TOURISM YOUTH CONGRESS IN ST. KITTS

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados ( 5 October, 2012) – A number of students from Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) member countries will inspire ministers and directors of tourism and other tourism leaders to take a fresh look at some of the tourism policies and programmes in their own nations in a spirited debate on two topics of major interest to the region’s tourism sector.
Thirteen vibrant “Junior Ministers of Tourism” will present creative and innovate approaches to sports tourism and the use of social media in tourism when they participate in the 10th Caribbean Tourism Youth Congress in St. Kitts next week.
The forum, which mimics a meeting of the CTO Council of Ministers and Commissioners of Tourism, allows the participants the opportunity to present their ideas and vision for the future direction of Caribbean tourism, based on extensive research of various facets of the industry. It also exposes their debating skills and forces them to think on their feet to provide immediate responses to questions on a mystery topic.
The participating countries include: Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, the British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Jamaica, Nevis, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Maarten, St. Martin and the US Virgin Islands. Dominican student Kitwanie Carbon, the winner of last year’s Youth Congress, will chair this year’s event.
The Tourism Youth Congress is an important and popular feature of the CTO State of Industry Conference which will be held from 10 -12 October 2012, under the theme, “Developing a Winning Tourism Strategy”. The Youth Congress will be held in collaboration with the St. Kitts Ministry of Tourism and will be held at the Sir Cecil Jacobs Auditorium of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB).
For additional information on the CTO Tourism Youth Congress and the State of the Industry Conference, visit www.onecaribbean.org. To follow the conference on twitter, use #SOTIC2012.
The Caribbean Tourism Organization
The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), with headquarters in Barbados and marketing operations in New York, London and Toronto, is the Caribbean’s tourism development agency and comprises membership of over 30 member governments and a myriad of private sector entities.
The CTO’s mission is to provide to and through its members, the services and information needed for the development of sustainable tourism for the economic and social benefit of the Caribbean people. The organization provides specialized support and technical assistance to member countries in the areas of marketing, human resource development, research and statistics, information technology and sustainable tourism development. The CTO disseminates information on behalf of its member governments to consumers and the travel trade