The Anguilla Tourist Board and its partner the Anguilla Tourism and Hotel Association have been travelling to key locations on the island with Rick Hendrie, a Boston-based company called ‘Hospitality Performance’, to see what improvements can be made to Anguilla’s brand name.

Tourism Personnel (Mr. Hendrie at right)

“The idea is to make the Anguilla experience something that is real.” The group spent a considerable length of time examining the Tourist Board’s building, visiting the sea ports and airport and other places. “If you come here and you say ‘the Anguillian experience is feeling is believing,’ you should know exactly what you are talking about. It means hospitality; indigenous culture; it means genuine, friendliness; it means welcoming.”

“We spent two days touring the ports of embarkation – Wallblake Airport, Blowing Point and Sandy Ground. The vacation begins the moment you get off the boat or aircraft and you go through Customs and Immigration, when you meet the police, when you go to get your ticket at the airline – all of them are the Anguilla experience and that is what we are looking at.”

The Anguilla Government’s Tourism Adviser, Donna Banks, said it was an enlightening experience visiting the ports. “All of us who walked through Customs, Immigration, Security, the Tourist Board and elsewhere, at the end of it we had been able to recognise some of the areas in which we may be deficient in really communicating the true Anguillian experience,” she commented. “We are now to sit down and work with all the key stake-holders to see to it that from the time of arrival to the time of departure that visitors coming to Anguilla can really have the true Anguillian experience and know that it was worth feeling it.”

Director of Tourism, Amelia Vanterpool-Kubisch, stated that the inspections of the physical and human resources were really to determine “whether we really project the Anguillian experience” and to do what was possible to improve the situation.

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