Tourism plus

YESTERDAY’S LIVE global telecast of NBC’s Where In The World Is Matt Lauer is expected to reach billions of viewers and increase tourism arrivals to Barbados from as early as next week.
According to top officials of the Barbados Tourism Authority (BTA) and others involved in the three-hour show at Sandy Lane Beach yesterday morning, it is exposure and advertising which the country – faced with a shrinking economy – could not afford but badly needed.
“This is the most successful television project we have ever had for Barbados, in terms of the time of the day – this is prime time and this is live – and the fact that there are two things that are significant: today is 11/11/11, it is the tenth anniversary of the Matt Lauer show, and it was the show’s final stop and climax of the week,” said BTA director of marketing services Averil Byer.
“The value of what we got today is in the millions . . . for that type of exposure and immediacy,” she said. (RJ)
 
ABOVE, FULL OF ENERGY and colour, these dancers, co-ordinated by local producer Dawn-Lisa Callender-Smith, added joyful rhythm to the set of the NBC Today Show segment – Where In The World Is Matt Lauer? – filmed live yesterday at Sandy Lane Beach. (Picture by Sandy Pitt.)
 
Full story in today’s SATURDAY SUN.