Monday, January 17, 2011 --  BTIA Hopkins Chapter held a meeting at Hamanasi Resort on Saturday, January 15.  Mr. Rob Pronk was elected as the new Chairman.  Other board members include Russel Nunez, Eugene Baptist, Ingrid Stahl, Reva Dark, Audry McCaulagh and Jean Barkman.  Several Hopkins hotels and business representatives were in attendance at the meeting, as well as BTIA National President, Jim Scott.

CELEBRATING DIVERSITY... 25 YEARS OF ADVOCATING FOR RESPONSIBLE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT

BTIA celebrated its 25th birthday yesterday with a press conference, tourism seminar and cocktail. The press conference in its welcome address took a look back at BTIA all those years ago and recognized its founding members and initial tourism contributors to the formation of the organization. Ms. Jeanie Shaw, daughter of BTIAs first president and matriarch of tourism for Belize Jean Shaw delivered a reflection on her mother's contribution to tourism, BTIA and the development of Belize. A video clipping of the 2nd BTIA Annual General Meeting President's address was aired for those present. The first Board Members and District Chapter Representatives were presented via the same historic video clipping.

For Immediate Release

BTIA HIGHLIGHTS ADVOCACY FOR TOURISM
January 25, 2010…. BTIA in celebrating its 25th Anniversary will be centering its focus on a series of issues with the hopes to reinforce its message of celebrating diversity while advocating for responsible tourism development. The past year was by all means a challenging one for Belize’s economy. Tourism, Belize’s major service industry experienced declines in revenue collection from hotel taxes, decline in airport arrivals for international tourists and the operators and BTIA members in the sector reported several business challenges ranging from longer low season hotel closures, cutting and rearranging employee work hours and schedules so as not to lay off workers, ownership and management changes for hotels, reduced vibrancy in tours, reduce spending from tourists across the board in areas affecting arts and craft and restaurant services.

For Immediate Release

ECPAT Update 2009
Belize City December 11, 2009... In Belize, tremendous efforts have been invested by many agencies to sensitize the public and train specific target groups about prevention of commercial sexual exploitation of children and prevention of trafficking in persons. Evidence of this can be seen this year in numerous television and radio messages, posters, training programmes (see Trafficking photo below) and in successful apprehension of perpetrators (see news articles below).

For Immediate Release

BTIA LAUNCHES 25TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS
December 7, 2009…. At its recent annual general meeting, BTIA launched its 25th anniversary celebrations. As the largest umbrella tourism private sector organization representing just over 600 members, BTIA will mark its milestone 25th year of operations in 2010.