Small And Medium-Sized Tourism Enterprises To Benefit From Webinars

Small and medium-sized tourism enterprises (SMTEs) are set to benefit from a series of business support webinars, beginning on Thursday, November 18 at 10:00 a.m.

Other webinars are scheduled for November 25, December 2 and December 9 from 10:00 a.m. to noon.

The Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo) and the Travel Foundation are hosting the webinars to help businesses recover from the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Product Quality Manager, Ocho Rios and Negril Region, TPDCo, Anna Reader, told JIS News that there is no cost to register for the webinars.

“It’s free, and once they stay for the entire two hours and fully participate, they will also be getting a certificate of participation at the end,” said Ms. Reader.

Registration details can be accessed on social media via TPDCo’s Instagram and Facebook pages as well as the Travel Foundation’s Big Up Small Business Facebook page.

Meanwhile, Destinations Programme Officer at the Travel Foundation, Rebecca Armstrong, indicated that there are four modules for the webinars, each covering a different aspect of business support and recovery.

“The first one is on markets and products. So, we look at customer trends and how businesses can respond, especially in these post-pandemic times or as we recover from the pandemic and how they can adapt and diversify their products to respond to growing customer trends,” said Ms. Armstrong.

The second webinar will focus on health, safety and security, thus highlighting COVID-19 protocols as well as international standards with which small businesses need to comply.

“The third webinar is on pricing… how the process works, how small businesses can work out their own pricing, what operators expect from them and how they can price their products competitively and how the pandemic affected pricing and how they should respond to that,” she added.

Ms. Armstrong further informed that the final webinar, titled, ‘Getting Ready for Business’, will look at different routes to market for small businesses and how they can access the markets in different ways.

“We [will] look at customer service and communications and also online sales and digital marketing, which really has been a growing area, I think for a long time, but it’s becoming more important in the last few years,” she added.

Ms. Armstrong pointed out that participants in each webinar will get access to a toolkit that will help them with market information about the Jamaican tourism industry.

TPDCo has been partnering with the Travel Foundation since 2017. In 2019 several seminars were hosted across the island, benefiting a number of persons in the industry.