Charlestwon, Nevis (March 28, 2007)
Chief Executive Officer at the Nevis Tourism Authority (NTA) Ms. Helen Kidd, the island’s premier tourism marketing tool, disclosed Monday that the island continued to receive added exposure from a number of articles which have appeared in major North American travel magazines.
Ms. Kidd made the announcement in an interview with the Department of Information on Monday March 26, 2007. She indicated that Nevis was featured in at least three magazines since a number of journalists continued to visit the island.
For the year so far, she explained that the first group of photographers and writers visited Nevis in January and they represented the Islands Magazine.
“That feature will not come out till July and August. However, immediately after that, we had a young man from the New York Post who visited us, his name was Chris Bunting and he went all over the island meeting with people and talking about, unusual for us, budget travel. As a result, we have received six columns in the New York Post about three weeks ago, excellent exposure for the destination. I am delighted to say, that also, a Florida publication by the name of Vive had been down here. One of the writers came down here which resulted in a piece that came out in the January issue of Vive, wonderful exposure of three pages for Nevis.Again this month March, it came out on the bookstands but it is the April issue of Caribbean Travel and Life. This particular piece was written by a journalist who was here about a month ago. He and a photographer were doing a piece on the beaches of St. Kitts and Nevis and I am delighted to say that we have now got 10 pages of exposure in Caribbean Travel and Life,” she said.
According to Ms. Kidd, in addition, the Authority has been engaged in several other internal marketing efforts. She indicated that a number of her staff were currently overseas promoting Nevis as a destination to potential regional and international visitors.
Meantime, Mr. Devon Liburd, the Authority’s Senior Product Development Manager who accompanied Ms. Kidd, noted that a film crew from Australia was expected to visit Nevis from March 29-April1st, 2007.
While on the island he said the crew would be engaged in a number of activities filming for what he termed was the most popular travel programme on Australian television called “The Great Outdoor”. He said the programme had so far been aired for a decade.
“While on Nevis, the film crew will be hosted by the Golden Rock Plantation Inn and they will participate in a number of activities which include dinner at Miss Junes Cuisine, Touch and Go Snorkel with Barbara Whitman and they would be doing a feature on the Golden Rock Plantation Inn.
“The special attraction of this film crew is Miss Universe 2004 Miss Jennifer Hawkins, who will be the host of this show. So we [NTA] will be very happy to welcome Miss Hawkins and the crew to Nevis to participate in the production of the television programme “˜The Great Outdoors’ which would be aired in Australia and on some other networks around the world,” he said.
The Great Outdoors is an Australian travel magazine series. The programme features a team of reporters who travel around Australia and the world to report on travel destinations, tourist attractions and accommodations. It premiered in 1992 in a 30 minute format but in 2002 the show was expanded to 60 minutes.
On a sidenote, this author was written up in Islands Magazine for their 25th anniversay issue about Nevis, and was NEVER mentioned. Alas maybe I was “touristy” enough :)