CHATA AGM 2016

Stay Focused…CHATA elects new board 2016/2017

CHATA held its Annual General Meeting on March 17th at the Central Bank of Curaçao and Saint Maarten where new board members were elected. Looking back at 2015, CHATA concluded that it was a year of high hopes and empty promises. According to CHATA we still have a long way to go. One of the greatest challenges we face as a tourism business is to make decisions. If Tourism is important: shouldn’t we be focusing on making this happen?

Before the Annual General Meeting CHATA introduced a new concept titled #CHATAHotSeat. The aim of the #CHATAHotSeat panel discussion is to open up a dialogue between the public and private sector on opportunities and challenges we see in our tourism industry. The questions directed by CHATA are considered a reflection of our tourism industry. Key issues such as Positioning & Branding, Tourism Master Plan, South American Market and restructuring of CTB were part of the discussion. The #CHATAHotSeat panel consisted of Mr. Eugene Rhuggenaath (Minister of Economic Development & Tourism), Mr. James Hepple (President & CEO AHATA), Mr. Paul Kok (General Manager Avila Beach Hotel) and Mr. Vincent Van Der Pool (STMP Project Leader).

During the official AGM, CHATA’s President & CEO, Lizanne Dindial opened up the meeting with the keywords “Tourism is the right Choice”. We need to realize the importance of tourism in order to continue working towards increasing airlift, developing our product and really grow this tourism business. Our people will be our main focus in 2016 with attention on our young professionals. Let’s all focus. We need to focus as CHATA, focus as the industry but ultimately focus together as ONE destination.

The new board consists of the following CHATA members:

*: elected for first term.

It was a tight race for the 3 large hotel positions; of the total of 243 votes, Will Vogels received the majority of the votes coming in with 198 votes followed by Cedric Nubul (168) and Darren Law (92).

CHATA would like to thank Ben Hoijtink from Wasserij Kòrsou, Jurgen Lippinkhof from Insel Air and Sander Winterberg from Livingstone Jan Thiel Resort for their period (2014-2016) with us as a CHATA board member.

CHATA is convinced that the newly appointed board of directors will continue with the mission and vision of CHATA and contribute to the development of a sustainable tourism industry with a strong focus on public and private partnership. Finally, CHATA would like to thank the members of CHATA for attending the AGM and the support given throughout the year. We welcome the new board and we wish them all the best of luck.

Note: The general meeting is the main membership meeting held every year where the members are updated on the challenges of the industry, forecast and outlook on 2016/2017 and financials of the organization looking back at the previous term.