Tobago has welcomed a 7% increase in UK visitors, as it hails the success of its new, rebranded marketing campaign launched last year.
Speaking at World Travel Market in London, Louis Lewis, chief executive of the Tobago Tourism Agency, said that the country has “aggressive targets” for visitor numbers, including a 25% increase in international arrivals by the end of the year.
UK arrivals are up 7% from last year, it was announced, while the island has also seen a 14% increase in international arrivals for the first half of this year.
In 2018, Tobago announced its new marketing campaign, Tobago Beyond: unspoilt, untouched, undiscovered, which Lewis hails a success.
Meanwhile, Tobago was directly affected by the collapse of Thomas Cook in September.
“The UK is our largest market and we lost one of our three winter services out of that market,” said Lewis. “We were fortunate in the sense that we moved very quickly to try to secure that business so there was a transition onto the existing operators, Virgin and British Airways.”
Lewis added: “What we have lost is capacity for growth, so that’s something that we are actively pursuing.”
However, as business shifted to other suppliers, Lewis said that “it has not had a major impact.”
“I’m very encouraged we will have even more capacity,” he said.