The Barbados Tourism Product Authority (BTPA) in collaboration with Milano Diamonds Gallery hosted the Chocolate Diamonds event at the Milano Diamonds Gallery Broad Street, The City.

Speaking at the event Communications Officer for the Barbados Tourism Product Authority Renice Bostic stated, “This is actually the first event in the Barbados Sugar and Rum Season which we launched on February 7. What we wanted to do is to give stakeholders and entrepreneurs the opportunity to come together and showcase their products within a structured season that we can package and sell to market Barbados.”

She added, “This particular event was conceptualised based on a brand called ‘Chocolate Diamonds’, we figured that within the sugar and rum season you can’t just look at a concepts – you have to look at the broader scope. For this one, particularly, we wanted to not only show the traditional or what people would automatically think when they hear sugar and rum, but something that is a bit different.”

“This platform allows the Milano Diamonds Gallery to showcase something that has been here for about two years because most people don’t know about the Chocolate Diamonds, so it’s giving the entrepreneurs an opportunity to showcase their business to both visitors and locals,” she explained.

Renice was pleased with the turn out and noted, “This is the pilot season. We will definitely do something like this again. We are going to be running this season again for the 2018 tourist season which will start from December and run straight down to April. This is just the pilot where we are trying to see what works and what doesn’t work. This is a portion of what we have planned for 2018. We just want to insure that we can give the locals the opportunity to bring more people within the mainstream tourism industry.”

Chairman of the Barbados Tourism Product Authority (BTPA), Cecil Miller, related the link between the BTPA events and the promotion of the conception of sugar and rum in Barbados he said, “Our events are looking at the realities of Barbados as a country which has for centuries been associated with the over consumption of sugar and rum. Our event really tries to pitch on that as an asset, so we have to let the people know of that history of Barbados, which is still with us, as part of, not only the product – but also the assets.

“In addition, essentially, we are trying to take an asset; focus on it from a tourism perspective, package it hopefully in terms of diversifying the product of Barbados and using it for tourism purposes, to bring more foreign exchange and revenues into this country and also to create experiences.”