Acting Director for Tourism, Ralph Higgs, has declared that the TCI Tourist Board is now practically debt-free. The institution has managed to erase the $8 million deficit that has crippled its operations in previous years.
Higgs pointed out that vendors to whom outstanding balances were owed, have been paid. Higgs said the Board was forced to employ a series of austerity measures so as to restructure the entity, to reduce operational cost.
These changes included the downsizing of the Board’s overseas operations by relocating from what he described as huge and extravagant office spaces in Manhattan, New York and London, to more affordable home-based office spaces manned by respective area sales and marketing representatives.
Since the cuts, Higgs said the recurrent budgetary cost to operate the Tourist Board fell from a staggering $8 million between the fiscal year 2006/2007 to approximately $2.7 million in fiscal year 2009/2010 – more that 70 percent. He said that the budget figure is expected to hold steady over the fiscal year 2011/2012.
“This initiative has improved efficiency, cut cost and had no negative impact on outputs. The Board accepts that the home-based office operations may be an interim measure, but is essential to stabilize the Board’s overseas operation – a critical part of our tourism plan and future expanding markets,” Higgs said.
Higgs told the media that over the past 15 months, the TCI Tourist Board had been burnishing its image in the travel industry on a global scale, but more so in North America, where the majority of its business come from.
He noted that mutual relationships have been reestablished with a number of international media house as a result of the settlement of lawsuits taken out by those entities to which the Tourist Board was indebted.
