Investerings klimaat Curacao
3 november, 2009 - Curaçao's Investment Climate
Since Curaçao is in a relatively early stage of aggressively promoting its international development, many opportunities exist for investors and entrepreneurs and these opportunities should only increase in the coming years. Many of these opportunities will arise from successful tourism promotion.
Other opportunities will arise as a result of continued privatization. Most of the opportunities, however, will be created from the vision of entrepreneurs and the synergies created by the cluster strategy. The greatest growth is expected to be in those sectors that leverage Curaçao's comparative advantages and focus on high value-added services catering to an international market.
- Education
- Business Training
- Financial Services
- Sophisticated Niche Tourism
- Culture, Arts and Entertainment
- Transportation and Logistics
- IT/Ecommerce
- Residential, Commercial and Retail
Tourism will drive the economic growth
Tourism, in particular, is growing exponentially as the professional and systematic promotional campaign of the Curaçao Tourism Board begins to gain traction in the North American market. Curacao’s tourism budget for marketing and promoting the destination in North American and European markets has increased substantially, thanks to project assistance from the Dutch government. Last year, traffic from North America grew by 8% in six of the eight months from January through August. As tourism demand increases, the opportunities to develop hotels and recreation facilities abound and Curaçao has a great deal of unexploited real estate.
Curaçao has long been a favourite destination for Europeans, South Americans, and many Caribbean residents, the focus now is attracting visitors from the U.S. and Canada. Curaçao averages 260,000 stay over visitors a year and 320,000 cruise passengers. According to the Curaçao Tourism Board, Curaçao is not promoting itself as a mass market, rather, the immediate goal is to double the 40,000 North American visitors to 80,000 a year by tapping into niche markets such as Jewish heritage and gay travel". The general lack of awareness of Curaçao in the North American market is slowly giving way to growing recognition. More importantly a new immigration card asks departing visitors to comment about their stay in Curaçao; since September 2003, 10,000 visitors have filled out the card, and 97% said they would recommend Curaçao to others.
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