TT strikes investment vibe

Trinidad and Tobago, the smallest country ever to qualify for FIFA’s premier soccer championship, is pushing hard at using the event as leverage in Germany to promote itself as a business and tourism destination.

“One of the main purposes of our presence in Germany is to provide information, not just to the general public but to the Press and to the investment community in Europe about investment opportunities here,” said Dr James Hepple, the president of the State agency, the Tourism Development Corporation (TDC).

Since last November’s qualification to the FIFA championship, Government has been looking at ways to capitalise upon this opportunity, according to Tourism Minister Howard Chin Lee.

“It is not often a small country such as ours has such an opportunity. We knew that it was important to have a well-thought out and targeted campaign for our promotional efforts in Germany as the FIFA World Cup is the most viewed sports event in the world, with more than one billion persons watching worldwide, with many living in our main source markets,” said Chin Lee.

“This is an enormous opportunity for Trinidad and Tobago to present itself on the world’s stage,” he added. Trinidad and Tobago has spent $10 million to send a large contingent, including a 129-member cultural entourage comprising steel-bands, calypsonians, dancers and masqueraders to the three cities — Dortmund, Nuremburg and Kaiserslautern, where the Soca Warriors football team will be playing.

The “Soca Caravans” — the name given to the Trinidad and Tobago exhibition booths — will highlight tourism, sports, culture, trade and investment opportunities during the month-long tournament in the three cities.

Each city in Germany, where world cup games are being played, is mandated by FIFA to hold a “Fanfest” where giant screens showing every game “live” will act as the focal point for entertainment and activity for fans living in, or visiting, those cities. Each Fanfest is expected to host between 400,000 600,000 fans during the month-long tournament and between 50,000 60,000 persons at any one time. Dortmund will be hosting six games — four first round, one second round and one semi-final.

The teams taking part in the first round are Trinidad and Tobago, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Japan, Brazil, Togo, and Switzerland — backed by thousands of their supporters.

Nuremburg will also be hosting games for teams including Trinidad and Tobago, England, Japan, the USA, Croatia, Ghana, Mexico and Iran.

Kaiserslautern will host games for Trinidad and Tobago, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Australia, Japan, Italy, and the USA. In the area of tourism, the Caravans are seeking to increase awareness of Trinidad and Tobago as a place to visit. This country is targeting particular markets such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, the United States and other Caribbean countries.

The Caravans also hope to raise interest in trade and investment opportunities and to project Trinidad and Tobago as the place to do business. Chin Lee is also keen on the publicity that TT should receive by sponsoring the main WTA Media Centre in Berlin. We are also the sole destination sponsor of the internet caf? and sports bar.

This, Chin Lee said, will provide TT with an enormous opportunity to feed information to the world’s press especially as the event reaches its climax in the first week of July when the world’s attention will be focused on Berlin for the football final.

The media centre is being operated by World Travel Awards (WTA), a well established tourism and travel marketing company based in London, and which specialises in organising media centres and internet cafes at such events. The caf? and sports bar will be located in Berlin for the duration of the event at the FIFA World Head Quarter Hotel, the Intercontinental Hotel in Berlin.

It is expected that up to 14,100 media personnel from around the world will be accredited by FIFA to participate in World Cup 2006. To that end, World Travel Awards has hired the Grand Ballroom at the five-star Inter-Continental Hotel Berlin from June 1 until July 10 2006, which will be equipped with a 24 foot by 15 foot big screen and six smaller 12 feet by six feet screens.

All 64 games will be shown on the big screen in the ballroom with full hospitality for the travel industry, media and VIPS. A 60-second TV advertisement profiling Trinidad and Tobago will be played on all screens in the ballroom and sports bar no less than four times — immediately before the game begins, immediately at the end of the first half, immediately before the second half begins, and immediately after the game ends.

This media centre and sports bar will be equipped with full wi-fi capability up to 750 square metres and will have a minimum of 100 computers and laptops, for use by the world media and VIPS.

The home page on all computers, laptops and fixed screens in this internet caf? and connecting with the WTA servers will feature Trinidad and Tobago. As well WTA will produce and provide a multi- lingual website in 12 languages to be hosted on the computers used by the media centre.

This website will include a minimum of 60 minutes of streamed video material as well as virtual tours of both Trinidad and Tobago and will highlight tourism, trade and investment opportunities.