Missing: The Trini Hotspot

I mentioned before that I was a loyal fan of Tripadvisor, cause they have helped me plan many a vacation (cause you know I love to travel) and avoid many a hellhole hotel, save money on entertainment and has offered great suggestions on things to do. So of course, I get their weekly emails about new cities, bargains etc. And darn it, I want to work for Tripadvisor one day. I am a loyalist.

I got an email this week which said "Top 10 February Hotspots". If you are Trini, you kinda know where this is going. I did a print screen, so excuse the quality of the image below, but these are the Top 10 February hotspots.

When I first looked at it, Thailand looked a bit like Trinidad and I was pleased for a millisecond. But seriously, who's responsible for this? I shared a great video a couple weeks ago, done by British Airways about our Carnival - fab publicity from an international airline. True they are promoting their airline, but half of promoting your airline, is promoting the destinations and they did a bang up job promoting the islands, with OUR Carnival. So, I just want to know if the powers that be are maximising the tools out there to get US out there.

Cause "hot" here can mean hot - temperature or hot - lots of action. Can someone convince me that Toronto, Canada beats Port of Spain, Trinidad on both versions of "hot"? Seriously??? February 2010? Carnival time? 35 degree celsius weather? I mean, this is a plug right here - for free!

This may just be one case of the missing Carnival, and maybe we are hot on every other list (somehow my confidence of this is very low) but I felt I needed to share. Are we still only doing trade shows, taking bottles of Angostura Bitters as tokens? Are we not realising that tourism is global and changing rapidly in the face of all this new communications technology? Are we monitoring what people are saying about us on sites like Tripadvisor, or Frommers? Are we still just peddling brochures or have we gone social, using those tools out there that travellers like myself rely on? How many of the travellers we want are at trade shows??? They're on the internet, scouring sites like Tripadvisor, Travelocity.

I was trying to email Tripadvisor about this, but I have a day job and someone else somewhere, I don't know who, is getting paid to do just this type of thing and sadly, is not doing it.

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