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“We’re all looking forward rather than backward,” said Willie Chin, director of sales and marketing at the Sheraton Puerto Rico Convention Center Hotel & Casino, the event’s home base for many of the attendees.

In a climate where many corporate clients are postponing—or flat-out canceling—corporate functions, the hoteliers feel the new programs also will encourage clients to proceed with their plans on schedule.

Marketing efforts

Carlos Baruki, director of sales and marketing for InterContinental Hotels Group, said his company has rolled out a corporate meeting program that infuses a specific location’s culture into the group’s meeting. For instance, companies and groups can choose to hear a lecture about a region’s art heritage, or visit the site of an architectural dig.

“People go to the Caribbean for work and fun,” Baruki said.

Sal Icaza, director of franchise development and emerging markets for Choice Hotels International, said Choice works closely with its franchisees in the Caribbean in developing marketing budgets.

“We say to them, ‘Here’s the money. How do you want to spend it?’” he said.

Over dinner inside the 2-month-old Sheraton Puerto Rico, Chin said the Caribbean Marketplace event was the first major conference the hotel has hosted.

It won’t be the last. The Sheraton also will serve as the official hotel for the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference being held in May.

Chin said the Sheraton will aggressively pursue citywide conventions, too.

“The beauty of it is that we aren’t a convention center hotel,” he said of the 503-room hotel that has the largest casino in Puerto Rico along with 35,000-square-feet of meeting space. “We think of this as an urban resort.”

Chin declined to identify specific 2010 projections for occupancy and revenue per available room for the Sheraton, which is the first new full-service hotel and casino built in San Juan in a decade.

“We try to be conservative as possible for 2010,” he said. “… Our belief is that (bookings) will begin ramping up in the last part of 2010.”

A need for marketing

Alec Sanguinetti, CEO and director general of the CHTA, said during a news conference at the Caribbean Marketplace that he was disappointed with the sparse turnout of tourism ministers at the event.

“We are concerned that we have only three ministers of tourism on the floor,” he said. “And registration is complimentary for ministers of tourism so it can’t be because of registration fees.”

Baruki said he feels the Caribbean region could do a much better job of promoting itself to corporate clients such as IBM and GlaxoSmithKline.

“The Caribbean as a whole should be marketed not only for individual leaders, but for groups,” he said.

To that end, the CHTA has renewed its efforts to push through a US$10 tax on airline and cruise tickets. A portion of that money would be put in a marketing fund for the region.

Sanguinetti said CHTA informed the region’s tourism ministers of its wishes at a meeting two days before Caribbean Marketplace, though it’s unclear when, or if, the tax will go into effect.