Dominica Goes Strong On New Branding And Tourism Strategy

For the unfamiliar, it’s easy to mistake the Commonwealth of Dominica with the Dominican Republic and vice versa.

So earlier this year, the tiny island of Dominica that lies at the northernmost part of Leeward Islands in the Caribbean Sea decided to launch a new brand and a fresh tourism outlook to reinforce the island’s identity as the Caribbean’s Nature Island.

The tourism department of Dominica is categorizing its marketing strategies into five pillars: Adventure, Agrotourism/Cuisine, Health and Wellness, Aqua/Water Adventure, and Events and Entertainment.

This way, the department believes, Dominica will be able to “establish a bolder identity for the island, minimize confusion in the marketplace between the two destinations, and illustrate the island’s rich attributes,” according to a report published by the Dominica News Online.

“The elephant in the room is the Dominican Republic, the same name with much more resources to spend. And so every time Dominica goes out to advertise, people think it’s the republic. And so we have to be novel, we have to be creative in the way that we go out and market and make sure we tell a story that resonates with people,” the report quoted Colin Piper, CEO of Discover Dominica Authority, at the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO)’s Destination Media Briefings in the Cayman Islands last week.

One important part of this initiative is the signing of an agreement with the MMC Development Ltd. for the construction of a new international airport. Expected to be completed in 2025, the massive facility will be built on 411 acres of land near the existing Douglas-Charles airport.

In a previous statement MMC Development Ltd. CEO Anthony Haiden called the Dominica International Airport Project as “the biggest contracted project not only in the history of Dominica but also in the history of the Eastern Caribbean region.”