Yesterday the Market Retreat Week was initiated with CHATA’s membership meeting hosted by Smith Travel Research (STR). The Marketing Retreat Week was launched at 15:00 PM at CHATA member ACOYA Curaçao. The meeting kicked off with Curaçao Tourist Boards’s Marketing & Research manager, Christine Campagnard providing the attendees with statistical tourism performance. CTB presented its latest available tourism statistics indicating positive market performances. Curaçao Airport Partners’ COO, Tobias Markert (CAP) presented developments on the Curaçao International Airport indicating that the upgrade of the Curaçao International Airport is starting late 2015 as to accommodate 2.5 Million passengers annually, upgrading from the current 1.8 Million passengers. CHATA’s Director of Marketing & Product, Miles Mercera presented a Tourism Decade Review that provided insight into overall tourism performance the past decade, indicating interesting facts & figures of the past decade. Overall Tourism has grown with approximately 100% since 2004 indicating that the Tourism industry has performed very well the past decade. During today’s membership meeting, STR’s Fatima Thompson and Alison Hoyt, provided an insight in Curaçao’s Hotel performance and Caribbean Hotel Performance. STR indicated that Curaçao’s occupancy over the past year comes in at 71% with an estimated increase of 3.6% as compared to 2014.  STR’s monthly occupancy figures indicated that February was Curaçao’s most successful month with a 85% sell out occupancy concluding exceptionally strong performance indicating a strong start in 2015’s hospitality. The closure of this successful first day of the marketing retreat week was with a Happy Hour at ACOYA Curaçao with all attendees networking and discussing tourism progression.