WILLEMSTAD- November 21, 2016 – Recently the Curaçao Tourist Board (CTB) organized a Public Presentation on the subject ‘Experiential Tourism in an Era of the Sharing Economy’. The idea behind this initiative is to help Curaçao tourism enablers and businesses to better understand these new business and tourism concepts, and the challenges and opportunities created by them. Experiential Travel and the Sharing Economy are both trending topics in the travel and tourism sector today. The rapid rise of companies such as Airbnb and Uber is constantly reported by tourism experts and international media.
During the Public Presentation participants got a better understanding of the how the Sharing Economy links to and encourages Experiential Travel, how to attract visitors with immersive local experiences, the main criteria a destination must meet to be successful in experiential travel, product development and marketing and examples of tourism businesses already responding to the opportunities in the Sharing Economy. Next to the Public Presentation an interactive three-day workshop was organized focused on the opportunities created for Curaçao tourism in the era of the sharing economy and more immersive local travel experiences. The result of the workshop is that five local attractions agreed to follow up on creating their authentic experience so as to showcase this to prospective visitors and create a memorable experiential product. CTB will support these five attractions.
Both sessions were led by Judy Karwacki of Small Planet Consulting. Judy Karwacki is a seasoned travel and tourism professional, with more than 30 years of experience ranging from retail travel to education, management and consulting. She has extensive experience in the Latin America-Caribbean region where she has worked with more than 20 destinations and for over 25 years.
