The St Kitts Tourism Authority has launched a new marketing initiative aimed at boosting visitors to the island.
At the Prime Minister’s Press Conference on Tuesday, Marsha Henderson, Minister of Tourism, said a fleet of 13 New York City taxis will be wrapped in St Kitts branding and deployed into locations where a significant portion of potential visitors reside and work.
“Ultimately the objective for the car swarm where we branded the vehicles is to help with filling those [airline] seats. So we can’t be extending routes or introducing new routes and not know how we are going to fill those seats. It is not going to be beneficial to us,” said Henderson.
The government has partnered with US firms Firefly and Neustar to target potential visitors and maximise the program’s impact.
Henderson said the marketing plan, which will run for five weeks, is part of a larger strategy aimed at increasing St Kitts’ visibility in its core markets.
“We went into our source market which is New York. So it is strategic. We also have feeder markets out of New York, where we find a number of visitors who take flights out of JFK – they feed from Canada, Ottawa, Toronto, and other areas – and so it was strategic to fill the seats on the itineraries that have been extended, particularly from April until August, so that we are getting value for the taxpayer’s dollar,” Henderson stated.
