CHATA hosts final membership meeting of 2022
“Making strategic choices”
Willemstad, November 24, 2022 – Yesterday, CHATA hosted its last membership meeting of 2022, with the goal to inform all members regarding the recent developments within the sector as well as CHATA’s new direction. The well visited membership meeting was held at CHATA Member, Renaissance Wind Creek Curaçao Resort and focused mainly on ‘CHATA 2.0’, with introductions by CHATA’s Chairman, Mr. Hans Slier and a thorough presentation regarding the CHATA’s direction and focus by CHATA’s Interim Managing Director and Strategic Advisor to the Board, Mr. James Hepple. Along with the Chairman and Interim MD, Deloitte Director and consultants, Mr. Menno George, Mrs. Pauline Godschalk-Hageman, Ms. Sarah Numan and Ms. Jacinta Correia also presented the results of the renumeration survey that was carried out among the CHATA membership, which was sponsored by CHATA Member, Guardian Group.
Mr. Slier started the morning off with a warm welcome to the attendees and dove straight into CHATA’s new direction. “Together with the board, we asked our membership what they want from CHATA and we were very pleased to see that the direction we wanted to go in was exactly what our membership has been wanting from us,” shares Mr. Slier. He continued to mention that CHATA, with the help of Mr. Hepple, will be focusing more on lobbying opportunities within the sector, collecting and distributing information to the members and destination marketing.
The first presentation of the meeting was given by Deloitte Director, Mr. George and consultant Mrs. Godschalk-Hageman. Sponsored by Guardian Group, CHATA and Deloitte put together a research survey regarding the development of renumeration within the sector, to meet the acute need for more reliable information about renumeration. Once presenting the results of the survey, Deloitte concluded that the market is expected to become more competitive within the coming years, given that more hotels are opening and pre-pandemic stayover arrivals are being fully recovered, labor shortages within the sector due to lack of well-trained potential employees, and lastly inflation, as the cost of living is already being raised and will continue to do so.
The last presentation of the day was given by Mr. Hepple where he elaborated on the state of the industry, destination marketing and developing a strategic plan for CHATA 2.0. “For the strategy to succeed, it is important to get buy-in and engage all members of CHATA right from the very beginning, instead of presenting them a finished plan with no explanation,” shares Mr. Hepple. He informed the membership that he is currently going through several steps to analyze CHATA’s situation and prioritizing them. The first step is collecting data, both qualitative and quantitative, by identifying the biggest challenges to moving forward, then with the information collected, one must create a guiding policy, which outlines an overall approach on how to overcome these obstacles, and lastly how will this be executed, how to perform coordinated and consistent action steps.
To close the meeting, members had the opportunity to ask the board numerous questions about CHATA’s new direction and as a result, CTB also stepped forward in reaffirming that they are open to receive collaboration with CHATA and its members in order to fulfill a higher stayover in Curaçao. The membership meeting was a great success and CHATA looks forward to continuing working together with all parties to achieve our goals.
