Tourism Business Connect Brings Industry Together in Belize City

Business owners, entrepreneurs, and tourism stakeholders gathered today at the Grand Resort in Belize City for the Tourism Business Connect event. The initiative is sponsored and organized by CENPROMYPE, the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise arm of the Central American Integration System, in collaboration with the Central American Tourism Agency, the Belize Tourism Board, BELTRAIDE, the Belize Tourism Industry Association, and the Ministry of Tourism. The event is designed to connect tourism businesses and entrepreneurs with support organizations to encourage collaboration, investment, and sustainable growth within Belize’s tourism sector. In addition to networking sessions, participants attended presentations focused on tourism development, innovation, and strategies to strengthen the competitiveness of the industry. Throughout the day, attendees promoted their businesses, exchanged ideas, and connected with potential clients and partners. Organizers say initiatives like this strengthen collaboration across the industry while supporting the growth of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Officials say creating stronger partnerships is key to ensuring the continued growth and sustainability of Belize’s tourism industry. Love News spoke with Chief Tourism Officer Josue Carballo about the importance of the initiative, as well as BTIA Pro Tempore President Efren Perez, who explained the association’s role in supporting the event.

Josue Carballo, Chief Tourism Officer, BTB: “We’re here today today to create business connections, as the word says it. So they had had a chance to previously register. They are now doing some matchmaking sessions in which some of them are providers, some of them are suppliers. So they’re looking at creating the supply chain that is needed for tourism both for growth nationally and then also for what goes next within this program which you it will also have a virtual meeting to matchmake with other businesses at first in Guatemala, which is our neighboring country. And we hope from here to expand this initiative to also include other countries of the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico, so we can have our businesses create platforms in which they can work together to enhance the supply chain and make us more competitive, no? Make us more competitive in terms of creating an export image so we can import more tourists or invite more tourists over to Belize.”

Efren Perez, President, BTIA: “The connection that we want to do is we want to make sure that the operators and the small hotels, the small restaurants, the small artisans are able to connect with the tourism industry because we realize that tourism is a large ecosystem. It really includes a lot of different moving parts and so what we want to do is we want to make sure that we’re bringing them together. We’re looking at where they are, where we would be able to also look at building capacity for them, training, and really formalizing them into the tourism sector. The main goal here today is collaboration. It is networking and really building business opportunities between the small operators and the tourism sector to create that linkage and really start to get much more into the communities that we work within.”

Love News also spoke with BELTRAIDE Executive Director Ishmael Quiroz, who outlined the organization’s role in supporting entrepreneurs, strengthening micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, and fostering business development through initiatives such as Tourism Business Connect.

Ishmael Quiroz, Executive Director, BELTRAIDE: “Beltraide is really the front line of engagement with the private sector. As you know, our mandate it really has that MSME at its core, MSME development. And so we’re playing a role here in ensuring that our clients are able to know of the opportunity so that they can participate and benefit from the opportunities. And we really want to be here as a local stakeholder to ensure that the agencies organizing it are speaking to the correct people, you know, are speaking to the people who have that opportunity, that potential to really make it a successful event. In the next room there are desks where people have signed up for meetings. They have either requested meetings or they are being requested to meet, right? So the idea is really to establish that actual mechanism for inter exchange. As was said, you know, often times long-lasting business relationships start with a single conversation and so this is about, you know, making those linkages, breaking the ice, getting people to communicate, talk, and understand what they’re each doing in their business.”

Organizers say they are hopeful the connections established during the event will lead to stronger partnerships, increased business opportunities, and continued growth within Belize’s tourism sector.