ST. THOMAS – The USVI Hotel & Tourism Association held its annual meeting on Thursday morning at the Ritz-Carlton hotel on St. Thomas, where Tourism Commissioner Joseph Boschulte spoke about strategies for sustaining growth in the industry, including targeted marketing and data-driven approaches.
One such approach is aimed at attracting a younger demographic to the territory.
“I think that in the Caribbean, there are certain islands that are starting to see the impact of not trying to market to younger people,” Boschulte said, going on to explain that his department had invested significant capital and money into social media. “You’ll start to see the USVI involved in many more influencer-type platforms, because these are the areas that people who make decisions in that particular demographic use to gain ideas to decide where to vacation.”
Recently, TikTok influencer Alix Earle visited St. Thomas, chartering a boat with her family and posting about the trip widely on her social media platforms, which have a combined following of more than 10 million people. And while the Department of Tourism wasn’t partnered with Earle, this is exactly the kind of content Boschulte wants to see more of.
“She came in and posted all of this by herself,” Boschulte said. “It goes to show that if you have a strong product, people will do the marketing for us.”
Boschulte explained that the department was also leaning heavily into data analytics and targeted advertising.
“We don't believe in a shotgun approach,” Boschulte said. “We believe in being very targeted at people who actually will make decisions to travel to the USVI. If you had three co-eds that were going to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, our metrics would tell us which one doesn't travel at all, which one likes to travel internationally, and which one travels to the Caribbean. And then we will target our ad to the one woman that travels to the Caribbean and has an affinity to the USVI.”
In addition to the social media and marketing strategies, the Department of Tourism is also focused on continuing to grow airlift capacity, saying that the territory is expected to see a 24% increase in airlift arrivals in 2024 over 2023. And so far, those numbers are proving to be true. Actual air arrivals for the first quarter of 2024 were up 26.5% over the first quarter of 2023.
Boschulte credits some of this growth to an increase in travelers from the New England area of the U.S. mainland, saying that conversations with American Airlines, Delta and JetBlue in March had revealed the airlines were experiencing increased demand for flights to the territory. But while the data shows positive trends, the commissioner stressed the importance of continuing to push to keep these airlift numbers up.
“We have to continue to be very diligent about making sure that we keep our airlift up, because that is critical for our hotels to do well, critical for all of our strategic partners that are in the tourism business directly and indirectly, which is why we invest as much money as we do in our marketing and public relations platforms to keep people interested and keep the USVI on the top of their minds,” Boschulte said.
